


Any Givens Sundae

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Justified
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Pre-Pilot, Canon Related, Canon typical racism & anti-semitism, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Relationships, Family, Family Drama, Floor Sex, Friendship, Guns, Ice Cream, Ice Cream Parlors, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury Recovery, Kissing, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Permanent Injury, Relationship(s), Rough Kissing, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Tattoos, Team as Family, Walmart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Raylan gave everything to the Marshals Service and was left with a settlement and a kick out the door. Being called back to Harlan is just one more kick in the teeth but Raylan's a different man now and he's able finds things in the holler this time that he was in no position to see before.





	Any Givens Sundae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mokuyoubi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mokuyoubi/gifts).



> To mokuyoubi: This was not intentional. My friend and I were joking about a moment in episode S2E13 Bloody Harlan and this happened as the only way I could see it possible. The general concept hit close enough to your prompts that I did what I could to hit some of your requests. I hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> Thanks to my support in this. To Keerawa for the content beta and cheerleading, D who I cannot actually name lest I give myself away who is my rock, my friend A. who got me into this glorious mess in the first place and most of all? Kalypsobean for EPIC cheerleading, supporting, challenging, and then a rockstar betaing of this beast at the 11th hour. I literally could not have done this without you all.
> 
> (and thanks as always to the frigging amazing Yuletide mods who are the true heroes omg)

“Do you know why you’re not in jail?” Dan Grant demands when he storms out of the courtroom. He plants himself in front of the bench where Raylan is sitting. He has his hands planted on his hips and looks twenty years older than he did when he went in an hour ago, to Raylan’s eyes. But then, everything’s looking old to Raylan these days. Pain, he’s learning, puts an edge on everything.

“Because he drew first.”

“Jesus Christ, Raylan, no,” Dan groans, covering his face. “No, you gave the man twenty-four hours to get out of Miami and then you killed him. Everyone knows it because you did it in public in broad fucking daylight when you were supposed to be on leave.”

Leave. Raylan does not sort of roll his eyes. That’s such a nice way of saying _out of sight of the Marshal service while they scramble to find a decent desk job for the mess they created._ “Well, Dan, when a murderous cartel assassin pulls a gun on you with intent to shoot, the state of Florida says you have the right to stand your ground. They’re very protective of the Second Amendment down here.”

“Stand Your Ground is the technicality they let you off on because of that fucking tape. I don’t know where you found it-”

“And you don’t need to.”

“Or how you got it admitted-“

“I have a very good lawyer.” He’d done a protection detail for Lucia Ochoa a couple years ago, when she was working along with the Miami AUSA to prosecute an international sex trafficking case in both civil and criminal suits. They’d narrowly skirted an affair at the time, but only because she was smarter than he was, had recognized the post-divorce mess he was and that since they actually liked each other, they had the potential to be friends - probably his only real friend since he left Glynco, Winona, and Art behind. “Besides, it was all over the news, Dan. Everyone’d seen it.”

She’d gone to work as soon as word of his capture escaped the Marshals service. She’d been there with his Aunt Helen when he woke up in that hospital in South America. She wouldn’t tell him how she got that footage. She’d just apologized that it had been necessary to release it. 

_“If we could get any kind of justice without it, I wouldn’t have.”_ She’d told him when he was finally lucid. _“You deserve your privacy, but they knew you were there and wouldn’t go get you. I’m sorry, Raylan.”_

“The fact of the matter is that they felt bad for you. They might not have. You cut it too close.” He drags a hand through his thick grey hair. “Way too close. I understand your need for revenge on the guy, Raylan but you can’t use the Marshals Service to do it.”

Raylan scratched his chin with his left hand. He’s only missing the tip of the middle finger and two fingernails on that one. Index, pinkie, and the flesh and bone to the first knuckle of his ring finger are gone on his right. 

Tommy Bucks had been very sincere as he smiled and explained to him that he was being generous by leaving him his thumbs. "The opposable thumb is what us from the apes, Deputy Givens, and I would never make an animal of a man I respect as much as you. Unfortunately, I can't have a shooter like you coming after me either." Tommy Bucks had been meticulous with his amputation and practically gleeful with survival knife he used on the smaller details of Raylan's hands. He'd used the machete for big areas, places that kept his insides on the inside. Raylan remembers the difference in sensation very clearly. 

“I don’t know, Dan,” Raylan drawls. “Is it revenge when you ask the guy who tortures you for a week, mutilates you, leaves you for dead, and pretty much cripples you for life to leave your city and be forced to defend yourself when you find yourself at gunpoint? Sounds a little more like justice to me. Self-inflicted even.”

“Raylan,” Dan says, on a careful exhale. “I am sorry about what happened. Okay? We are all sorry.”

“You know what, Dan? I believe that. I genuinely do. But that doesn’t change the body I gotta live in, does it?”

Dan opens his mouth but Raylan cuts him off before he can continue.

“The U.S. Government left me there. For a week. _You_ left me there with him, knowing exactly what he was doing, and you only came and got me because after he took out twenty-five feet of my small fucking intestines, dropped it in my lap, and he made it clear he wasn’t coming back. No more info for the DEA to record for their stupid fucking war, was there?”

“We weren’t a part of that,” Dan protests. “Raylan, you know the Marshals Service didn’t have a part in that.”

Raylan meets Dan’s eyes with a hard gaze. “But you didn’t help either, did you?”

Dan doesn’t answer that. He looks away quickly, studying a particularly interesting spot on the floor. “They all came back with the decision not to indict. The AUSA isn’t going to look into the Tommy Bucks matter any further.”

“That’s good. And what’s Uncle Sam got for me?”

“There’s a director position open in-“

Raylan shakes his head slowly. “Try again, Dan.”

“Goddamnit.”

Raylan smiles at him. “I’ll take that in a lump sum. Easier to pay taxes on it that way. Speaking of which, whatever number you boys come up with? It needs to be an after taxes amount.”

Dan sags. Then he pulls out his cell phone and starts dialing, in defiance of the no cell phones sign on the wall. 

Raylan makes a point of relaxing into the uncomfortable wooden bench despite the screaming disagreement of his back. He smiles at the look of resignation on Dan’s face as someone in a legal department of the DEA picks up on the other end of the line.

~*~*~

Raylan can tell Lucia is not thrilled with the way the settlement conference is going. In fact, she is furious. She spends a solid two hours fighting with the AUSA about what he deserved and Raylan is tolerating it. She's a human razorblade and he's going to get him his settlement, but he keeps hoping that whatever killing blow she's going to strike is going to happen already so he can stop biting his tongue.

“You really don’t think suffering amputations for the sake of this country’s bullshit drug war is worth half a million dollars in compensation?” she demands, with her hands planted on the conference table. “Deputy Marshal Givens is lucky he can walk at all after what Buckley did to his scapula and femurs. The fact that he's using a cane instead of still sticking to a therapeutic walker is stubbornness, not doctor recommendations, which I have if you want to look at them.” She taps another stack of files in emphasis.

AUSA Whoever (Raylan stopped keeping track of all of them awhile ago) looks pale but refuses to be moved. “When a person joins law enforcement, they sign on for risk of harm and death, Ms. Ochoa.”

“No one signs up for live disembowelment. No one. Or do you think that the unedited footage could circulate the internet for a few days before the Attorney General is ready to look at his case again?” She glances over at Raylan. “What do you think - Youtube?”

“I don’t know,” Raylan muses, giving her a smile. “They have content guidelines.”

“The kid I babysat for in high school just graduated college. He likes reddit but swears by this thing called 4chan, says if you want the internet to know something, you start there.”

Raylan tips his head in her direction, curious. “You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that.” He didn’t get online much. Well, he didn’t used to. He’s been on more since he got back to the States. He’s had a lot more…free time. 

“Apparently, it’s one of the more infamous parts of the web you can get to without going dark.” Lucia says, not taking her eyes off her opponent. “Verified incidents have included murders and suicides posted on the anonymous boards. There was even one case where pictures of body parts in a freezer were posted. The photos was sent to multiple law enforcement agencies, by good citizens, and were certified as genuine. No one ever found the source.” She gives AUSA-Whoever a toothy grin. “Real shame.”

“That it is,” Raylan agrees. 

“Ms. Ochoa, Deputy Givens-“

“Do you know what it’s like to have internal organs pulled out of a six inch incision in your stomach and shown to you?” Lucia asks, her voice steady and firm. She holds up her hands and makes a space between with her fingers. “Six inches. When you say it, it sounds short, but when you look at it, that’s an awful long length for a knife to cut into a person, don’t you think?”

The man’s beach-tanned skin goes pale. “I-“

“I literally cannot imagine. Can you imagine? It seems horrific. Raylan informs me that it is. I take his word for it.”

Raylan tips his head down and covers his face with his hand and makes a choked noise. He knows what AUSA-Whoever thinks is happening but honestly, Raylan is trying so hard not to laugh he’s practically dying. Jesus, Lucia is fucking amazing. He really regrets not dating her when he had the chance. She’s married now and he is the kind of mess he wouldn’t wish on anyone but damn, she is still something else. 

“Deputy Givens-“

“Oh no,” Lucia cuts in. “You don’t talk to him. You talk to me. And you make me the kind of offer I can’t refuse. Enough games, Martin. This is Miami. You offer me Scarface money or we don’t talk at all.”

Raylan snorts but it sounds like a sob. AUSA-Martin sounds pained. “Jesus, Lucia, you know they put a cap on what I can offer.”

“I do. Let’s start there.”

His sigh sounds as if it’s been pulled out of him by pliers over a mile of barbed wire. “Five million over twenty years.”

“Ten million over ten.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You know that’s not going to pass. Lucia, be reasonable.”

“How many fingers do you have? Because when United States Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens counts his, he doesn’t get to ten anymore. If they DEA had actually allowed the local police to do their jobs, then-“

“Those circumstances are not up for debate here, so-“

“So ten over ten.”

“Eight over ten.”

“Ten over ten.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

When Raylan drops his hand, both lawyers are standing, hands planted on the table, bent over into each other’s face. It reminds Raylan way too much of the way he and Arlo used to stare each other down right before he got a solid right hook to the jaw. 

“Listen, Martin was it? Martin, hypothetically speaking, what’s the biggest check you could write me today?”

Both heads turn and look at him. Martin seems surprised that Raylan isn’t in tears. Lucia, on the other hand, is far more shocked by his question. Shocked and pissed. She’s going red under her terracotta skin tone and it is with pure outrage.

“Raylan, don’t you dare. We talked about this.” Well, she had lectured. He had told her he wasn’t interested, twice, and she refused to listen. He didn’t call that much of a talk.

Martin, for his part, just looked nervous.“I, uh, I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“Suppose we settle, right here, right now, for the largest amount you could give me - either in a signed check that I could deposit in my bank before close of business or an electronic transfer that’ll show up in my online banking tomorrow morning or however the government’s doling out its hush money these days. How much would that be precisely?” He holds up a hand, gently cutting off Lucia’s protest before she can make it. “And as I told Dan, we’re talking after tax amounts, if you please. I never had much of a head for math.”

“Raylan, don’t ruin this for yourself. I can do this,” Lucia hisses.

“Let the man answer the question.”

“Um,” Martin hums, actually twitching his fingers like he wishes he could count on them. He looks up at the ceiling, clearly doing the math in his head. “I’m not sure about after taxes, I’d need a calculator but I’m pretty sure it’d come to something like nine and a quarter, maybe nine and a half?”

“Hundred thousand?”

Martian has the gall to roll his eyes and honestly, it makes Raylan respect the man a bit more. “Well of course.”

“No offense intended, son, but you are a lawyer. A fella has to be sure.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Lucia moans, dropping back into the luxurious black office chair the conference room provided. “That’s nothing. We can do so much better. You’re killing me, Raylan.”

“I get that a lot.” He tells her. “I can live with nine hundred plus. Whatever your max is, that's what I want and I want to leave with it today. I want this over.”

Martin looks like Raylan just told him he could drop an eight-hundred pound weight. “All right. That we can do. Lucia? You want to help me with the paperwork?”

“Off the record, Martin, I want you to eat an entire bag of dicks,” she snaps as she begins to scrawl on the paperwork in front of her. “Del La Rios will assist and check to make sure it’s all in order. Give her the same kind of resistance you gave me and she’ll break you in half. I want the check and settlement ready close of business so I can forget your face by the time I meet my husband for dinner." 

She turns to Raylan and smiles as Martin scrambles to get things together on his side of the table. "It's date night and it's my turn to pick the position. I'm thinking reverse cowgirl, maybe wheelbarrow if Saleem's shoulder is alright. Anything so long as we're not screwing around with foreplay," she conspiratorially but loud enough that their opposing counsel can hear and drop a couple pens in surprise. She grins and Raylan is reminded again about the adage about lawyers being sharks. "I just cannot wait to fuck this day out of my system."

That’s it. Raylan can’t hold back his laughter anymore. 

He’s laughing and laughing so hard he can’t breathe. He gets up and stiffly makes his for the men’s room but he barely gets out the door before he’s laughing again. He ends up sagged against a wall, tears are slipping past his defenses, just a little, but definitely there as he chokes on his response. 

Sure he can attribute his reaction to Martin’s face at Lucia’s declaration, but that doesn’t explain spike of panic he feels with each spasm. She was funny, but she wasn’t that funny, he realizes as the little wave of hysteria calms itself with the heavy reality that this is it. 

When he takes this settlement, his life as he knows it is really over. He hasn’t had his badge or gun since Tommy Bucks took them off him. Once he signs this settlement and his retirement papers, it’ll be over. The Deputy Marshal part of himself will be gone and he’ll just be plain old Raylan Givens again. He doesn’t know if nearly a million dollars is enough to cover the cost of finding out exactly who the hell he is without it. 

~*~*~

Who he is, it turns out, is a man with a decent apartment, many ex-lovers he never contacts, several ex-colleagues who were always very cordial at the Marshal's office but have no interest socializing with a man they perceive to be a walking, talking embodiment of failure, no family to speak of and very few friends. Very few. 

Lucia and her husband Saleem al-Tahir step up to the plate in a way Raylan did not expect. Mostly, Lucia tells him over a dinner at the beachfront home the two share a week after Raylan officially retires from the Marshals Service, they’re being so because Saleem is desperate to help Raylan invest his settlement.

“What happened to attorney/client privilege?”

“I asked you what you were doing with the money when we went for drinks after you got the check,” Lucia pointed out, waving her fork at him. “Which I shouldn’t have indulged you in anyway. Are you even supposed to be drinking on those horse pills they’ve got you on for your legs?”

Raylan did not dignify that with a response. “You know, this broccoli is excellent.” Lucia snorted and shook her head.

“Oh my god, come on,” Saleem groaned. “You have a million dollars to invest however you want, Raylan, and no plans to do anything but let it sit in an account and collect one-percent interest forever,” Saleem protests. “That is like-“ He threw his hands up and almost knocked over his glass of wine. “That’s like having an entire bucket of Legos and not building anything with it.”

“That’s incredibly mature of you, darling.”

“It’s not a million dollars,” Raylan feels compelled to point out.

“Just because some of us didn’t go into law does not mean we are inherently lacking in creativity. I’ll go on the record about that.”

Lucia snorted into her chicken Alfredo. 

This was the latest in what was maybe a dozen meals they’d had him over to eat since he’d met them. The first time had been when she first took his case, when he’d been a wheelchair bound wreck subsisting on pop tarts, frozen pizzas and tv dinners too long for pride to keep him from accepting an offer of food he didn’t have to prepare himself. The second was before the settlement negotiations but after the Tommy Bucks dismissal, as a bit of celebration, and she and Saleem had broken out the champagne. They’d gotten to know each other at that one - Raylan telling them a little about Kentucky, Lucia catching him up on how they met and eventually (drunkenly) explaining that just because they drank did not mean they didn’t try and keep at least some semblance of halal in their house, thank you very much. Raylan thought it was an interesting cultural compromise, one he wouldn’t have even known existed before he came to Miami. Saleem was a bit of a nerd, who could actually talk about politics and math without Raylan’s eyes glazing over and reminded him of what Boyd might have been if they’d grown up in a gentler world that nurtured his intellect instead of his cunning. 

Now these shared meals are one of the truly comfortable things in his life. Salem and Lucia are good for him. He can trust them, at least a bit. 

“What if I let you?” Raylan asked curious. “What would you do with it?”

“Depends,” Saleem says, his eyes lighting up. The man did something with finance Raylan was never clear on, investing and selling stocks or something along those lines. He made a hell of a lot of money doing it, more even than Lucia who had already made designer shoe, South Beach apartment money when he’d been her protection detail. “I know it’s early for you, but if you have plans on what you want to do that, then you have to consider how much your next venture’s going to cost you; but, your key’s going to be to diversity. The real estate market is still in the trash after the housing bubble burst back in ’07 so now’s actually the time to buy and the right piece could set you up, but it’s always a risk. Tech stock is always good, especially with the way certain properties are growing - Google obviously but we like the way Amazon is going and a few others.” He scratches his neck. “There’s the oil boom in the Dakotas but you know with the war, that’s tricky.”

“You sound like a kid playing Risk but with money.” Raylan remarks. It reminds him a little of Boyd Crowder actually, always planning, thinking a step ahead but also three steps outward and around, taking in the consequences any move would make. 

“Or a really dangerous version of Monopoly, which he also loves. Who likes Monopoly? This asshole.”

“It’s kinda like that, yeah, if Risk was the real world and the Monopoly money were real.”

“A gambler then.” Raylan muses, in a good enough mood to laugh with them. He’s not drunk enough to ignore the pain that’s become his constant companion since Nicaragua, but between the alcohol and the entertainment, he’s fuzzy enough not to mind it. 

Saleem grinned. “No. Investment.”

“I do believe that is what I said.”

Lucia groaned. “I never should have introduced you two. It was a mistake.”

“Probably,” Raylan agrees, but he’s glad she did. He’s glad he’s here. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing in Miami or in the world in general. With Boyd on his mind, he thinks the word his old friend would use to describe him now would be unmoored. They help.

“If I needed it, could I get it back?”

“Yeah, I mean, it would take a few days on any given investment and the higher risk investments could lose you money but-“

“Yes, Raylan. He means yes.”

“I’ll want to know what you do but, you might as well. I got no plans for it at the moment. So sure. Why not?” He only needs a few thousand at a time to live on and the way Saleem lights up like a kid on their birthday is kind of its own reward.

“I’ll never hear the end of this,” Lucia mumbles into her wine. “You’ve cursed me, you miserable bastard.”

It gives him something to do, though. For the next few weeks, he meets up with Saleem at their place in the late afternoon on Saturdays to discuss investments. They work longer than they need to for the first two weeks, longer than Raylan can honestly handle, in an unspoken agreement to create an excuse to have dinner. By the third Saturday, Lucia tells the both they’re not fooling anyone and creates a standing dinner date for the three of them and the investment work separates, moving to Wednesday mornings at the firm. 

By the time everything is in order and all the money is where Saleem thinks it will grow best, Raylan doesn’t need an excuse to spend time with them anymore. They’re just his friends, the kind who he can spend time with simply because he enjoys their company - no more and no less. He doesn’t think he’s ever had that in his life before, not with the guys on his ball team in high school, not with Boyd, not with this classmates in college, not with his coworkers at any office in the country, or even with Wynona when they’d been at their closest and best. Maybe he’d come closest to this with Art Mullins back at Glynco, but even that had come tangled with the strings of professionalism.

Their friendship was something that was his. Raylan Givens was a man who could build a friendship. That wasn’t much, it was true, but damn. He was at a point where he’d realized that wasn’t nothing.

~*~*~

He’s at a ridiculous boutique furniture in South Beach with Lucia (because she said “Do you want to get lunch?” and he fell for it like a sucker) when his phone rings. She’s looking at handmade ottomans shaped like manatees and sea turtles and so she doesn’t notice his surprise when it goes off in his pocket. He almost reaches for it with his right hand before he remembers his index finger isn’t there anymore, that if he tries to open it, he will have to finagle his middle finger to hit the buttons. He never bothered to set up the Accessibility mode because it's been so long since anyone but Lucia or Saleem called him and so he keeps it on his left side now. 

He keeps everything on the left side now. He is still waiting for the world to get back in balance from that shift. It’s been months and it hasn’t happened yet.

He fishes it out with his left but nearly drops the damn thing when he sees the Harlan area code. He knows he hasn’t been strangled (because he has, in fact, actually been strangled before and it doesn’t feel like this) but his air definitely cuts out for a moment at the familiar prefix and unfamiliar number.

He hopes he sounds steady when he flips it open and says, “Givens speaking.”

“Hello Raylan,” says a warm female voice on the phone that Raylan hasn’t heard in a lifetime but could never forget.

Now he really can’t breathe. Fuck. “Mrs. Bennett.”

“Come on now, boy. You know it’s always Mags to you,” she chides gently. “I was sorry to hear about your unfortunate circumstances, Raylan, but I want you to know we got nothing but the highest regard for you down here in the holler for how you handled yourself. Took some courage to face down a thing like that. You done us all proud.”

“Oh,” he says because fuck those twenty-four hour news channels anyway. Was he really the best story they could find the week he shot Tommy Bucks? Weren’t they still at war in Iraq or Pakistan or Afghanistan or, Jesus, somewhere? “Well, thank you kindly Mags. I appreciate the sentiment, but you know I have to inquire as to the nature of this phone call. I wasn’t even aware you had my number. ” 

Please, he thinks, let Nicaragua and the Tommy Bucks shooting be all. Let this be the weirdest social call of all time. Let Mags Bennett be having the most most unexpected midlife crisis ever recorded and be calling because of old times sake. 

“Raylan, I'm not gonna mince words with you.” He does not snort at that because she is his elder and one of the most terrifying human beings to stride across the surface of the earth. But the fuck if she won’t. “Your Aunt Helen’s in the hospital. If you were wanting to see her -“ Mags stops and lets out a sharp breath. Mags, who is possibly the hardest criminal Raylan never had to take in, is choked up. “Well, all's I can say is that she’s in a bad way and you should come back now. She’d want me to tell you.”

Raylan has been disemboweled. Literally. It felt a bit like this. “You two were close?”

“Not especially but we know each other well enough nonetheless. If it was me, and you was one of my boys…” She trails off into a silence that Raylan is sure is filled by a shrug on the other side. “Sooner the better, ’s all. She’s at County but they're gonna move her to Lexington once she's been stabilized, hopefully 'fore the end of the day." She pronounces every syllable of 'stabilized' like it's its own distinct entity. "I've already spoken to your father. He won’t be giving you no trouble, I promise you that. You have my word.”

“I-“ Raylan has no idea how to respond to that. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking or feeling. He just knows that his Aunt Helen could be dying and he is a thousand miles away and that cannot stand. It will not, not after everything she did for him. “Thank you.”

“Don’t you thank me until I have a chance to see you in person. Call this number back if you’re flying in to Lexington; Doyle’ll come get you with lights and sirens so you don’t waste no time.”

He doesn’t thank her again,just makes a small sounds of agreement and hangs up. As he drifts across the store, his bad knee thuds gently against a dolphin-shaped chair. The impact sends pain screaming up his thigh and down to his toes. Even that is not enough to pull him out of his haze. 

When he finds Lucia, she takes one look at him and puts her hands on his shoulders. “Raylan? Hey, mijo, you alright?”

“I need to go.”

“Okay. Yeah. Let’s go. I don’t need that table anyway.”

She leads him outside but seems at a loss when Raylan doesn’t follow her in the direction of her car. “Raylan.”

“I have to go home.”

Lucia is frowning at him. “I just don’t know if you should be driving like this, Raylan. Look, let me take you back to our house and we can talk about-“

“I wish I could.” You don’t know how much, he thinks. “But I gotta leave for awhile.” He leans down and kisses her on the cheek. “Thank you, Lucia. Tell Saleem I said the same?”

“What the fucking- Raylan, what the hell are you talking about?”

He would hug her, if he were a different man. He would tell her he loved her and that he loved Saleem and that he wanted to be part of the life the two of them built, figure out some way to build something real in Miami, if he were a different man. 

But he couldn’t.

He was a weak man and he’d had too much hurt in recent months. He couldn’t take this kind on top of the rest, because admitting what he was losing would gut him and he did know. 

He knew, somehow, that when he walked away from Lucia and her husband and her beach house and his apartment, from the bright sunshine, terrible humidity, clear saltwater, oppressive heat and rich diversity of Miami all together, that he’d never come back. Kentucky called and he was going and when he got there, he had no doubt Harlan would sink its teeth into his neck and never let go again. He is the man Arlo and Helen and Francis and Boyd and deep mines and the dark hills and the soul of Harlan, Kentucky had made him. 

“Raylan,” she protests.

“I’ll call you,” Raylan tells her. He doesn’t want it to be a lie. But it is. He knows it before he’s out of the parking lot. 

~*~*~

Doyle Bennett’s Bennett Police cruiser is waiting for Raylan outside the Lexington Airport baggage claim terminal. Doyle himself is sitting in the front seat and he doesn’t get out to help, which Raylan isn’t sure if he appreciates or resents. Nothing is easy the way it used to be and even throwing his suitcase in the trunk is difficult when you can’t grip the way you did for the first thirty-nine years of your life but damned if what pride he still has isn't a bit appeased by being left to manage alone. 

He slides into the front seat and Doyle pulls away from the curb without saying anything. Raylan hasn’t seen the man in more than twenty years but the guy was always fairly chatty. All the Bennetts were a talkative clan, come to that.

Yet they make it all the way out of airport parking before Doyle deigns to tell Raylan a goddamn thing. What he starts with is “Now you need to know that Mama’s handling things,” and his blood runs cold. 

He could force the rest out of Doyle but it’s still another three hours from here to Harlan County General. He’s tired and and his legs hurt from the flight (but then his legs always hurt) he’s scared enough that he doesn’t actually want to ask.

“Your father and the Bennett police had a discussion that exposed some of Dickie’s dealings he’d rather not have made known, you see.” Doyle explains finally.

Raylan sighs and drops his head against the cool glass of the window. Of course he fucking sees. He doesn’t know exactly what Arlo was involved in this time but it was something illegal and illicit and probably stupid as shit to boot. Normally, though that wouldn’t end with his aunt in the crosshairs. 

“Mama takes a bit umbrage to take our business outside the family.” There’s a soft sound as Doyle purses his lips and sucks his teeth. “Just ain’t done.”

Well, goddamnit. Raylan presses his forehead harder against the glass, willing away the building tension headache. His will must be weaker than it used to be because the pain is mounting behind his eyes and at his temples.

“If I recall,” Raylan says, treading carefully on the eggshells of unspoken knowledge everyone in the county has but doesn’t talk about, “Mags ain’t really the sort to tolerate insubordination.”

“No, she is not,” Doyle agrees, enunciating each syllable like a punch. 

“I take it Dickie didn’t appreciate her reaction or interference?”

“Punishment’s more like,” Doyle agrees. “He was sore about it. Dicke don’t never know when to leave well enough alone, do he? Broke into the station, damaged some property, dug up some names.” There’s the sound of nails scratching hair. “Went digging in places he shouldn’t’a.”

“And if it were Arlo in the hospital, this would make perfect sense.”

“Well, Dickie didn’t exactly knock when he went to go have words with your old man.”

Raylan can imagine it. Dickie Bennett, with a twenty year grudge the shape of Raylan’s bat burning in his heart, in Helen’s foyer or living room or kitchen. She would never have stood for that. She probably had the house shotgun or maybe his mama’s ancient little pistol (nah, Helen was a shotgun kind of woman) as Dickie tried force his way to Arlo.

“I know your mama taught you lot better manners than that.”

“Well they got her to the hospital in time, ’s all I know.” He doesn’t need to say that whoever “they” includes, they didn’t stick around to be properly arrested.

"Then why are we going west?"

"'Cause a chopper flew her up here for surgery soon as she could after the unfortunate event. We ain't exactly swimming in heart surgeons down in the holler."

Raylan opens his eyes just so he can roll them at Doyle. He does allow himself a little exhale of relief because if she's in Lexington for surgery then she's more stable than she was, at least stable enough to move.

“Now Mama’s handling the situation.” Doyle says, firmly. Out the windshield, the hills stretch around them in a lazy sprawl that isn't all that dramatic this close to the city. Police justice isn’t dramatic either, but Harlan justice is not the law Raylan used to wield. Bennett justice isn’t either. 

“She’s gonna to take care of it.” He rubs his mouth with an open palm. “We’ve got him on lockdown until we see how things wash out. We're all just sitting tight right now, Raylan. ”

He ignores a half a dozen texts from Lucia and Saleem. He thinks about blocking them, a clean break like the one he made twenty years ago, but he can’t do it yet. Not until he sees Helen. He satisfies himself with just deleting them unread and glaring out the window at Lexington as rush hour unfolds.

The land isn't as stark in the suburbs as it is in Harlan and the hum of the police cruiser's engine does nothing to settle his mind. Nothing does that but time and finally arriving at the hospital.

Doyle doesn’t try to stop and engage him as he climbs out. Raylan appreciates it. Getting in and out of cars is a pain in the ass. He doesn’t want help from anyone, least of all a Bennett, but he wants to get to his Aunt Helen. So he’ll let the man play valet with his bag as he limps into the same hospital that set every bone Arlo broke.

Speaking of that particular devil, Raylan finds Arlo sprawled out asleep in a chair when he gets to Helen’s room. He snores right through Raylan’s arrival, and Raylan doesn’t wake him. 

Helen is pale and thin and there are tubes everywhere. Raylan takes her hand, her skin paper thin but so soft, and thinks he liked it better when their positions were reversed. Being in a hospital bed was easier for him than sitting beside one. 

“I didn’t die on you,” he whispers, under Arlo’s snores. “Return the favor, alright, Aunt Helen?”

She doesn’t say anything, sleeping on in what must be an intense drug and pain haze, but she keeps breathing. For the time being, Raylan can’t ask for more. 

~*~*~

It’s a sign of how poorly Helen is doing that he and Arlo manage to make it nearly 24 hours before they start a shouting match. Raylan uses his good hand to drag his father into the hallway when he starts to scream them into the ground because he doesn’t know how much Helen can hear and he will not disturb her after this latest surgery (her third since Dickie Bennett pumped her full of buckshot).

Arlo actually doesn’t resist because for once, he’s concerned too. He’s not so concerned about Raylan. 

“Twenty goddamn years and you come limping in on your white horse now? Well, I don’t need you!”

“I didn’t come back here for you.” Raylan snarls, pointing the middle finger of his right hand at Arlo, relishing the flinch he makes at the disfigured flesh. “I came here for her.”

"She don't need you neither."

"It ain't about need. It's about family and just because you don't have the capacity for compassion in your withered heart doesn't mean we all have a hollow hole where our souls should be."

"Those are nice words for someone who abandons the people he claims to care about and-"

"So help me God, Arlo, you finish that sentence I will hit you in the face."

Arlo snorts and rolls his eyes. "You can't even make a fist."

His left hand tightens on his cane, ready to swing, and he stops. His aunt is on the other side of the wall. For her, he won’t. 

He swallows hard and snaps “We both know I don’t need it.”

“I don’t know shit.” Arlo snaps, kicking at the cane, barely missing it in a way that could only be intentional. “Just stay out of my way, boy.”

Raylan would be more than happy to if they were staying here instead of trying to get back to a place size of a pencil eraser and the hospital even smaller. They circle each other like sharks around chum but manage not to have a knock down drag out fight. They avoid it by not speaking. Well, Raylan doesn’t speak and that’s good enough to keep things from coming to blows. 

He’s been living on hospital coffee and ice cream sandwiches for a week when gets a call from a number from with an area code he doesn’t recognize. He figures it's a wrong number but when it calls back he picks up and hears “If you hang up on me, Raylan, I’ll have someone track your credit cards, I swear to fucking Christ.”

He’s glad he’s sitting down when he hears her voice. He might have fallen otherwise. “Lucia?”

“Oh good. You remember me. I think you can see how I might have thought you forgot?”

“Lucia, I can’t-“

“Where are you, Raylan?” She demands, no arguments brooked. “What happened?”

“What number are you calling from? What’s a 907 area code?” He was in law enforcement a mighty long time and never encountered that one.

“Our intern’s from Anchorage. Raylan, Saleem won’t let this go until I pull all my strings because you can’t just disappear on people.” We were worried isn’t what she says but it’s what he hears. Fuck. Fuck he hates this. He hates that he’s fallen back down this hole. It’s dark as a pit mine. 

“I went home, Lucia. Family business.”

“And when will you be back?”

He doesn’t answer. He considers hanging up but it’s been a week with no one to talk to but Helen’s doctors talking about antibiotic doses, and goddamn Arlo. He can’t cut ties with Lucia, not yet. Her friendship had been too much of who he’d been becoming. 

“Raylan?”

“I don’t rightly know.”

"I'm in court for the next three weeks but Saleem can work from anywhere just-"

"Do not send Saleem here." Raylan orders sharply. 

Saleem is soft in a way that Raylan had rarely encountered in an adult before, warm and gentle in a way wasn’t meant for the harshness of these hollers. Never mind that an Arab Muslim man wandering around in Harlan county was a lynching waiting to happen. This part of the world would chew him up and spit him out worse for the wear. “Lucia, you hear me? He’s not to come and neither are you.”

“But-“

“Don’t track me. Don’t follow me. Don’t. Do. Anything. I’ll be fine. I am fine.”

“You’re not as good a liar as you used to be,” she bites out. “Raylan, just-”

“Stop. You and Saleem were-“ He doesn’t have words for what they were. His lifeboat, his oxygen, his cool water after years of thirst. He healed with them and that’s what his aunt’s going to need, him strong and whole. “Thank you.” he manages, because he’s man enough to give her his gratitude. 

“No,” Lucia protests breaking his fucking heart. For the first time in the years that he’s known her, she sounds small. 

“I’ve got to go.”

“Raylan, no.”

“Take care of yourself.”

He hangs up and goes into Helen’s room so that he can blame any tears that slip past his defenses on the sight of her in that bed. She looks bad enough that it almost works. 

But she gets better. 

The days crawl by until she finally cracks an eye open to glare at him. “The hell‘re you doing here?” She croaks before falling back asleep and Raylan can breathe again.

The very polite city doctor uses the term _cautiously optimistic_ but that she’s not out of the woods yet. They don’t know Helen Givens. 

When Arlo says “You’ll be begging to get her out of here in a week, two tops, the crusty old bitch,” Raylan agrees with his father for once in his life.

He manages to hold back a smile as he apologizes for his language. “He doesn’t know better. That barn everyone always talks about? He was actually raised in it.”

After another surgery and a full week of recovery, the city doctor wants her to stay in a hotel in town _just in case_. Standard procedure for anyone who won't be near adequate medicate care. 

"Fuck your hotel and fuck you. My care will be plenty adequate, thank you very much." She snaps the prescription pad out of his hand and looks down at it and frowns. "Two refills for Percocet? Are you kidding me with this shit, kid? I know you were the follow up but they scraped a cup of buckshot out of my chest."

"They met in that barn I mentioned earlier, " Raylan mumbles into his left hand.

"You'll just have to make an appointment and come back, Mrs. Givens," the doctor says and he meets her glower with a placid expression. Arlo cackles in delight. Raylan knows things are better because has moved from worrying about his family to wanting to shoot them all. That is real progress.

"I only gave you two because you're insisting on traveling back south today. This is a gift," the doctor snatches the prescription back. "The muscle relaxers and topical are a longer term prescription. If you use them right they'll do most of the work. I'll send in the nurse with your discharge papers." The doctor looks at the three of them in turn and exhales hard. "Take care Mrs. Givens, Misters. Givens, it's been an... experience." The doctor hands them over to her and doesn't wait for the door to hit that nicely pressed white coat on the way out. 

"You should've been more polite," Arlo chides, elbowing him. "Didn't them Federals teach you nothing about how to behave? Lord knows you didn't learn nothing from me and your mother at home, God rest her soul."

"Yeah, okay." Raylan says with a sigh, leaning heavily on his cane. "That was about me."

"Well it wasn't about me," Arlo protests. 

It's the wrong thing to do because it reminds Helen that he's there. 

"Did you bring my makeup?"

He glares at her, wrinkled mouth twisted up like he ate an entire crate of lemons. Raylan still sees that expression in his nightmares sometimes. 

"I don't know, Helen. Do I look like Coco Chanel to you?"

"No, you're right, she's in much better condition."

Raylan has never seen them together. His mother was still alive when he left and when she died, his aunt called. When Helen had married this old asshole, she had called and he'd hung up on her and refused to speak to her again until he was in pieces in Nicaragua. That was always just her, though. Just Helen, not Helen and Arlo.

He doesn't know what the hell he thinks of it. They fight exactly the same way they did when he was a kid and he and his mother were between them, minus throwing things (and that's just for now, he guesses). He doesn't know what else they've got going on behind the curtain of their marriage. He imagines it's all shotguns in the living room, freshly formulated emulex in the kitchen, and razor wire in the bedroom. 

What Raylan is sure of is that he isn't looking forward to spending three hours in a car with the two of them. Not one little bit. 

~*~*~

Cuddling a rabid, wet cat would be a more affectionate, friendly, pleasant experience than caring for his Aunt Helen in her convalescence. The city doctors had said she’d need a lot of rest but when she’s not asleep, she’s hissing at anyone who so much as comes near to give the help she unfortunately requires. Anyone, of course, meaning Raylan, as Arlo has practically moved into the VA and is sleeping on the couch “because walking up them stairs is too much effort.”

So Raylan gets the uncomfortably intimate experience of changing the dressing on her wounds and helping her up and about and a dozen other little things while she railed against him every step of the way. The tasks were tedious and exhausting. Simple things like opening or replacing bandages, and cutting medical tape took twice as long now that he was forced into left-handedness with just the contact points of his middle finger, thumb, and the shortened ring finger on his right hand when his left was just too clumsy. If he ripped a packages open with his teeth when she wasn't looking that was between him and his God. No matter what he was doing, Helen fought like a rabid mutt in a dog fight but nothing he couldn’t handle with Arlo out of the way, the sort of tasks Helen had declared were “nothing special” when she had done them for him or Arlo or his mother. Now?

“This is the most ridiculous load of fussing I have ever been subjected to.” Helen declares, hands planted on her his as she sat on the toilet seat. “I’m not having it, you hear me?”

It’s not that bright in the floral-patterned bathroom but the glare from the vanity lights are getting to him. Everything’s getting to him lately, but he just adjusts the Marlins’ cap on his head against on the bad lighting and fortifies himself. “And if it were me fresh out of the hospital staggering around with a busted heart and Swiss cheese lungs, you think you’d leave me to break my neck in the shower?“

“Raylan, I love you like my own, have since you were a little boy, but I ain’t moving until you get the hell out of my bathroom.” 

“I won’t look. I don’t even need to be in here, Aunt Helen, just leave the door open so I can hear you if you need me.”

“I will not.” She looks so tired that the indignation is obviously forced. Raylan hates it. 

“Don’t lock the door. Final offer or I lift you up and drop you in with all your clothes on.”

“You don’t make ultimatums to me in my house, Raylan Givens. And take off your hat when you’re inside. You know better.”

He does know better, but he’d found it at the bottom of his duffle when he’d settled, miserably, into his childhood bedroom and it made him miss Florida a little less. It had been a mediocre Secret Santa gift from work, before Tommy Bucks and the cartel, from someone in a neighboring unit who just knew that he wore a hat. 

At the time he'd tucked it away with the thought that even though he'd stopped wearing baseball caps since the day he took out Dickie Bennett's knee, it could one day be useful for something like a stakeout or an undercover gig. Now, he's glad he has it. His old hat just didn’t fit right anymore. 

“I’ll take off the hat and leave the room if you leave the door open.”

Helen makes a disgusted noise. Raylan doffs his cap and leaves, because while he may not know when to leave well enough alone most of the time, he does with her.

He stays standing out of sight beside the door as the shower turns on because he’s afraid that if he follows his impulse and sits on the floor he won’t be able to get back up. He can’t afford to stay down. It wasn’t an option before and it’s not an option now.

Helen is not where she was before. The city doctor told them she’s at risk for all sorts of things and will be for a long time. “It’s a miracle you survived at all Mrs. Givens. A gunshot wound’s a lot to recover from at any age.” Helen had said some things that made even Arlo look uncomfortable at that remark but facts were facts. 

Weeks tick by The wounds heal, but, Helen doesn’t magically bounce back to full strength. She nearly died. Raylan knows better than most the cost of survival. Of course that doesn’t stop her from pushing herself too hard, too fast and gives herself pneumonia two months after the shooting. Raylan is trying to explain this to her about this, _again_ , when Helen kicks him out of the house. 

“And why not him?” Raylan demands, one hand planted on his hip, the other bracing his weight on the cane Helen abjectly refused to accept. 

Fine, he’d use it then. Walking with one his legs hurt less, he could use a spare and unlike some people? He wasn’t afraid to take assistance when it was offered. He could use the spare.

“Because quite frankly Raylan, I ain’t screwing you.”

Raylan closes his eyes."I didn’t need that image.”

“Well it’s the truth. I can move around good enough now, I don’t need you motherhenning me. Go back to Florida.”

“You know that’s not going to happen.” Not when the doctor said a fall could put her back in the hospital, not when her lungs would never be the same. She was his Aunt Helen. She saved him. He couldn’t leave her now any more than he could cut off what fingers he has left. 

Going back to Miami would be easy but it wouldn’t be right. He isn’t exactly comfortable in Harlan but here, close to the woman he owes everything to, he can continue live with himself. 

When he moves into Helen’s old house two days later, he realizes he actually has to figure out what he’s going to do with that life.

~*~*~

Raylan isn’t a drunk but he loses a good number of nights after Helen gives him the boot. A tall enough glass of Mag’s apple pie, one of the many apology offerings from the Bennett Clan, will do that to a man.

It’s easier to look at himself through the soft haze of hard liquor. He is still just as shattered, just as worn out, but the sight doesn’t hurt him so much. 

The thing is, he’s only just over forty and he’s burned through three lifetimes' worth of futures. There was baseball - that, he torched when he took that bat to Dickie Bennett’s knee. He’d left mining in the ashes of his youth, an option he’d never wanted to face in the first place. He’d been happy (or something like happy, whatever happiness could be for a man like him) as a Marshal, but that path was incinerated somewhere between when Raylan watched Tommy Buck's machete split bone and flesh so his fingers fell away from his body, and that breath of despair when he had been bleeding to death in a puddle of his own viscera with his legs shattered beneath him. 

So what now? What the hell did he do now, back in Harlan, with a cool million in the bank between his savings over fifteen years and the AUSA blood money, and nothing to do? Seems like there should be something besides turning into another of the town drunks or cripples, with that behind him. There had to be.

When he’s sober, he spends most of his time running Helen’s errands. That splits most of his energy between the skeleton of downtown Harlan, where every purchase forces him into friendly small talk with people he really never wanted to see again, and making nice with the wage slaves at the county’s one and only Walmart. 

Sometimes he sits on one of the benches near the bathroom and watches as everyone, from teenagers from church grannies, shoplifts their way through the the store. No one bothers to stop them, not for $7.25 an hour. He doesn’t blame them; this is coal country after all. The oxy economy lives and dies on the mines, SSI checks and returned stolen goods, and no one wants the cartels to move in with heroin when the local pill mills get the job done for a stolen TV or stand mixer. 

He comes out the Walmart on a crisp fall night with a bag full of groceries for Helen and a half pint of Hagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and some TV dinners for himself, and he finds two teenage boys smoking a joint on the hood of Helen’s truck. They’re both skinny, stretched out by the rapid growth spurts of adolescence and not enough good food. One of them has a Reds hat pulled low over his face, while the other’s dishwater hair hangs over his eyes. They don’t even blink when he approaches.

“I’m going to need you gentlemen to find another spot.”

They roll their eyes and Raylan realizes they’re probably even younger than he first guessed. The blond snorts and rolls his eyes. The boy in the hat doesn’t even look up from the joint’s glowing cherry.

“Now boys, just because I’m parked in a handicap spot doesn’t mean I can’t find a way to convince you to move.”

“We’ll move when we’re finished,” the boy in the hat says. Then, to make it clear that he doesn’t mean it _like that_ he holds out the joint out to Raylan. “You want a hit?” His eyes assess Raylan critically and he tilts his head. “Looks like you could get away with claiming medicinal use.”

Cocky and mouthy and beanpole thin and reeking of ragweed, the boy in the ballcap sends him flying twenty-five years back in time - to a different truck and a different night with a different boy smoking their grass off torn pieces of college ruled paper. His face is too round and his nose is too straight and his coloring isn’t right , and he’s at least a year or two younger than they were when Boyd got Bo’s truck and really, aside from being so wiry, hee looks nothing like Boyd did at sixteen except for how he’s a perfect template to superimpose that ghost onto.

It saps the last of his patience. “Get off my truck. Ain’t you got anywhere better to be?”

The boy in the hat passes the joint over to his friend as he slides off the hood. “No.” He takes it back as the quiet blond follows him to the asphalt. “This is Harlan. Ain’t nowhere to be.” The blond stays quiet as the boy in the hat slings an arm over his shoulder and, trailing smoke, leads them away away.

Raylan watches them walk away, across the parking lot and into the dark. The sight of them together burns itself into the back of his eyelids. In Harlan there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. What’s that leave besides drugs and empty spaces? The mine, of course, and the hollers, but not much else. 

He’s still stewing over it when he gets back to the house Helen still owns. He stands in front of the freezer after he’s put the groceries away, staring in at the contents like it has the answer but all that’s there is a pizza, frozen dinners, and the vanilla ice cream. 

It’s nothing, definitely not enough. He left in the first place because nothing in Harlan ever was.

“Can at least have some decent fucking ice cream,” he mumbles, pulling that out instead of real food because he’s an adult and he can have ice cream for dinner if he wants. Having eating ice cream here, in this kitchen that kept him safe as a boy, makes him feel better.

But more importantly, as he stares down at his spoon and contemplates the cool contents, it gives him an idea. It’s a silly idea, frivolous and juvenile and he can already hear what Arlo’d have to say about it (nothing good) but maybe that’s why he likes it and if it fails? Well then fuck it. 

Now he just has to do it and see what happens. That’s the easy part for Raylan, though, always has been. What matters is that he’s stumbled on something new for himself, a way to move forward that isn’t a doomed resurrection of any of his old lives. 

Fucking finally. 

He doesn’t finish the half pint ice cream that night but when he does, two days later, he cleans the lid and keeps it. He’s not the most sentimental man, but he’s kept a few things that matter over the years. He puts the lid on the kitchen table face up.

He scratches potential names for his undertaking on the white cardboard. He fits in four on the inside of the lid in black ballpoint before he hits on the right one. It's a godawful pun but it brings everything together, a ludicrous name to match the absurdity of a man like him opening a _damn ice cream shop_ : Any Givens Sundae. 

It's terrible, he knows. He can't bring himself to give much of a shit about that though because for the first time in years, since Winona walked out on him or hell, maybe even earlier, he's actually excited for his future. 

~*~*~

DeeDee Tippett lives with her parents as she has four children, three under the age of ten, and no husband. Dwayne was another sacrifice to Black Pike Coal and it’s very tragic but not at all scandalous. When Raylan wanders up, well that is terribly scandalous indeed, he knows. 

After all, his family and hers do not get on well. Well, Arlo and Gerald McClaren don’t anyways. Neither did their fathers. Their fathers before them neither. DeeDee kept her married name when Dwayne died but she'll always be DeeDee McClaren to Raylan.

When Raylan wanders up to Gerald McClaren's house, well that is terribly scandalous indeed, he knows. After all, his family and hers do not get on well. Well, Arlo and the McClarens. She kept her married name when Dwayne died but she'll always be DeeDee McClaren to Raylan.

She was two years younger than he was, and behind him at Evarts. She had long brown hair and big grey eyes and the terrible misfortune to blossom early, with tits the size of her head before she got to high school, a waist that his hands could have met in the middle of, and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. Needless to say, she'd been too handsome to have many girlfriends and too hot to do anything but turn heads, so she was pretty goddamn miserable, constantly the butt of rumors and teasing.

Then their senior year she'd been in the same period as him and Dwayne McClaren for chemistry, even though she was younger, because she tested well at that sort of thing. Dwayne was a year younger than Raylan but he was the shortstop and they were friendly enough. Friendly enough that when Raylan got matched with DeeDee as lab partners, he hadn't seen a reason to say no when Dwayne had quietly asked if he wouldn't mind switching.

Of course, Dwayne had been paired with Boyd Crowder. Raylan accepted because he was the only one in their grade who could keep Boyd, with his coal-dark eyes and nitroglycerin smile, from using the chemistry lab as an excuse to blow up the school once a day. He'd seen it as a public service, taking Boyd off Dwayne's hands. 

And if, on occasion, Raylan had taken advantage of the fact that Boyd's sticky fingers came away with a volumetric flask or graduated cylinder to use for the private science experiments of create better bongs and cooking up moonshine alternatives that taste less like gasoline and more like Mags Bennett's apple pie? Well, he wasn't going to snitch. Not when he was usually the one reaping the benefits, leaned against a tree on a crick bed, or sprawled out next to Boyd in the bed of the truck that was an ungracious hand-me-down from Bo.

It was probably because of the cotton candy moonshine monstrosity that Boyd cooked up that took Raylan so long to notice the change in DeeDee though. She smiled more when she was walking down the halls, she laughed loudly in class when her head was bent together with Dwayne's as they worked on an assignment, and then, one day, she showed up at practice in a skirt a little shorter than might be proper for church and a sweater that revealed nothing at all but did absolutely everything for her curves. Dwayne had gotten hit in the head with a pass thrown his way, he was so distracted staring at her.

"I ain't saying it's a bad thing." Boyd had said when they'd spotted them swaying together at the Homecoming Dance a few weeks later. "I'm just saying that sort of enamoration can prevent a man from reaching his full potential when it comes to focus and productivity."

"Say it to someone who wants to hear it. He's a good guy and that girl deserves some nice attention for a change."

"Well I can't argue with that," Boyd mused from his spot near the punch bowl he had spiked. "We could all do with some nice attention from time to time I reckon."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm sure you'll piece it together, Raylan," Boyd mused and an instant later, Janet Lee Ayers appeared at Boyd's elbow and dragged him onto the gym floor to dance. Raylan hadn't dwelled on much of either after that because Emma Lou Gaines had done the same to him less than a minute later.

And that would've been that, except a week after winter break, they started a section on endothermic and exothermic reactions. and Mrs. Warren had used cooking as an example. 

Then, DeeDee, a picture of genuine learning, had gone, "Would making ice cream be endothermic?" and Mrs Warren had lit up like a damn fuse, talking about ice absorbing heat and state changes.

Raylan still doesn't know how it happened but the next week, DeeDee McClaren brought in her mama's recipe for strawberry ice cream, Mrs. Warren had brought in the ingredients and they'd spent the period making ice cream. Aside from the time a real live astronaut came to Evarts, it was probably the coolest thing Raylan ever did in high school.

And it had been fucking delicious. He and Boyd had eaten theirs snickering and feeling a little giddy and talking about how this was easy, they could do this on their own, maybe add whiskey to the mix and get drunk on ice cream. They never had, of course, but Raylan hadn't forgotten it or the way DeeDee had glowed with pride at everyone enjoying something she had a part in creating.

So when he rolls up on her daddy's front porch, he has an entire speech prepared. What he gets when he opens the door is an arm full of DeeDee Tippett, who is hugging him tightly but gently. Because she heard. 

Over the past few months, Raylan has come to painful grips with the fact that everyone's heard. His time in Nicaragua made national news twice over, between his going missing and killing Tommy Bucks and had been the reason Helen had not only left Kentucky but the country, for the first and only time in whole life. He's also learned that despite the fact that Arlo never even bothered calling Raylan while he got all his leftover pieces stitched back together, or after as he dragged himself through an agonizing recovery all the way to about a quarter of the man he once was, the old man sure had managed to spread word of his son's condition around the county. In humiliatingly explicit detail, for the sympathy drinks they garnered at the VFW, Raylan has no doubt.

DeeDee doesn't say anything about it. Just lets him go easier than she would've if he were different, if his life were different, and smiles up at him. 

"Raylan Givens, as I live and breathe. I heard you were back in town but I can't say I ever imagined you'd darken my humble doorstep." She tilts her head and grins a wicked little grin Raylan's never seen before but that he'd heard Dwayne talk about plenty in the locker room and then later underground in the dark. "I thought you and I were separated by an ancient grudge. Yet here you are."

"I'd be lying if said I were here with pure intent."

"Oh?" She leans against her doorjamb and laughs up at him. "So you came all the way to my daddy's back forty to make a move on my person? I didn't think you were that kind of man, Raylan."

He does not blush. He does not turn pink and stutter over his words but he does choke a little. "Ah, no. I'm afraid I'm here for even more nefarious purposes."

"Even worse?" She folds her arms over her still-ample bosom. "Well, now you have my attention."

"Do you remember chemistry class?"

Her face goes soft and it takes about twenty years off her face. She's fifteen and she's in love with Dwayne Tippett and she's happy for a split second before the past fades away and she's a tired woman racing towards middle age, with four kids and a funeral plot where her husband should be. "I do."

"You remember that ice cream you made?"

"We all made that ice cream, Raylan, be fair to yourself."

"But it was your family recipe and your mama's ice cream always blew the block away when she brought it to parties."

Deedee’s smile was another fond trip through time. ”She did." 

"What would you think about capitalizing on it?"

"Meaning what, Raylan?"

"Meaning I came into some money recently and the unfortunate need to grow where I'm planted, which happens to be here in Harlan. So I thought, why not contribute to the community instead of constantly bitching about what's missing?"

She arches a brow at him. "Contribute."

"An ice cream shop, DeeDee. I pay for it and run it. You make the ice cream. We split the profit fifty-fifty."

She laughs at him and shakes her head. "Yeah, Raylan. Okay. I'll do that. I'll quit the Cut and Curl and make ice cream all day. It'll be great." She shakes her head. "I didn't hear you took any blows to the head along with the rest of your troubles."

"Look, if we fail, we fail. But what if we don't? We could do something that's nice for this town, for the kids who live here, the parents too. Not like there's a lot of places to hang out without a bar is there?"

"McDonald's parking lot," she sighs. "Or behind the new high school. They've closed down Evarts, did you hear?"

He hadn't. "How old's your oldest?"

"Ugh," DeeDee groans. "Danny's fourteen and thinks he's forty."

"And where's he got to go? What's there to do? Not like there'd be that much to do but sit and talk 'bout sitting, and talking in a place that don't serve booze is a good thing, DeeDee. And I don't know." He smiles at her. "I like ice cream."

"That you do," she snorts.

Raylan starts at that. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means where do you think Boyd Crowder got that the idea to make blueberry bourbon ice cream for the graduation party, and who do you think he talked into making it?"

"I knew that was you. We're selling that flavor. Twenty years later, I still dream about that ice cream." Raylan beams at her, crooked and as sincere as the day as long. 

"Oh, that's what you dream about?" She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "I don't know, Raylan. Daddy's helping and not having to pay rent take a lot of the strain off but I can't just drop my job."

"If it works, we make money and if it doesn't..." Raylan searches his mind for an amount he can guarantee that won't also be so big as to be insulting. "I can write you a check for fifty-thousand to cover you while you look for a new job."

Her eyes go big as the wheels on an ATV. "Fifty thousand dollars? If we fail?" She shakes her head. "Jesus Christ, Raylan, what if we succeed?"

"Then I guess you can save it for college for the kids if they want to go. Or trade school. Or a new house. Up to you really. You just don't bail on me and leave me without any ice cream to sell."

"How much could you pay me ’til we start making money?"

"How much you pulling in at the Cut and Curl?"

She shrugs. "Make me an offer Raylan. Then we'll talk."

"I don't know. I've never done this before," he admits. He wishes Saleem were here. He'd know how to do this. "A grand a week until we get settled and then we go in even?"

DeeDee gapes at him. "That's a lot, Raylan."

"What have I got to lose?"

"Your shirt."

"Eh. I'll get a new one." He leans in, a little closer than is strictly proper around these parts with a woman who's been widowed as long as she has. "I don't know if you heard, but I came into some money recently and it only cost me an arm and a leg."

DeeDee laughs but steps back and invites him in. When he crosses the threshold, he sees Gerald McClaren and young Danny Tippett both holding shotguns, albeit now pointed towards the ground. He doesn't laugh himself but he's tempted. He takes off his hat in deference to Mr. McClaren and nods at Danny, the young man of the house.

"Mr. McClaren."

"Raylan. You look good, all things considered."

"I had some good doctors."

"Ngh." Gerald grunts. "Heard about Helen. Condolences." 

"She's pulling through. She always does."

"Well, you give her my best. And tell Arlo to go fuck himself with a rusty shovel if you see him."

"Daddy!" DeeDee protests as Danny snorts out a laugh.

"Don't you 'Daddy' me, Doris Diane. He knows what kinda man his daddy is and why a man might have that sort of sentiment towards him. Don't you, Raylan?"

"That I do and I can't say as I blame you."

"See?"

"I meant the cursing, Daddy," DeeDee snaps, planting her hands on her hips. "What did I say about cursing around the kids?"

"Ah. Yes. Sorry, sweetheart."

"I don't mind, Pawpaw," Daniel chirps helpfully. He's got DeeDee's coloring but otherwise, he could be Dwayne in freshman year all over again, albeit with a better haircut. If he's half as easy to get along with as his daddy was, Raylan can see himself getting along pretty well with the kid.

"Of course you don't," DeeDee sighs. "All right Raylan, let's sort this out."

~*~*~

Raylan cannot do the actual construction required to turn what used to be a grocery store into an ice cream parlor. He just can’t. Adapting to life as a lefty had not been easy or kind and he has trouble with precision work such as using a pen now, let alone weird power tools, with his hand mutilated as it was. His legs couldn’t handle heavy lifting either. Not to mention the fact that he knew fuck all about the electrical work that would be required to get the kind of industrial freezer units he’d need for the front. Thank God it had once had a butcher shop, because at least it already had a ridiculous walk in freezer (a big part of the reason he bought the place instead of the empty building that was a failed attempt a vape shop). 

Still. The fact that he is physically unable to do the work himself means he is going to have to hire someone. In Harlan. To do contracting. 

Which. No. Sweet Jesus, no. 

There are so many reasons he doesn’t want to do that. Being unlikely to find a licensed contractor and legitimate construction crew that weren’t all hooked on oxy for one. The likelihood of having gone to school with anyone who could possess a contracting license, and probably a good chunk of whatever employees they might bring, for another. 

He lucks out of his dilemma by running into Bob Sweeney at the closest thing Harlan has to a town square, otherwise known as the Walmart. He's ostensibly there getting supplies for Helen (but she's doing better, and when he's not driving her up to Lexington for the once a week PT she's finally agreed to, she's started making Arlo drive her to the store even Arlo bitches about it loud enough to be heard in Ohio because heaven forbid he contribute to his wife's wellbeing and his own household in any way). In reality he's loading up on ice cream to take over to the McClarens' so that he and DeeDee can figure out what they do (and don't) want to do with what Daniel calls their "flavor palette" because Gerald had cable and the whole family has started binging the Food Network since he and DeeDee finalized their agreement. 

"For inspiration," DeeDee had told him. 

"For research." Daniel had explained.

"Because she won't let me watch the Skinemax until the little ones are in bed," Gerald had groused, loudly, and repeatedly, but always with a fond look on his face.

Raylan was inclined to think it was a combination of all three. But thinking about whether or not he really needed to taste cotton candy ice cream to know it was an abomination didn't really prepare him for socializing, and Bob was nothing if not social. 

“Raylan? Raylan Givens. My God. You look great, you know, so much better than I was expectin’, you know, with the torture and all?” He’s smiling so wide, all sincere and bright eyed. 

Raylan winces but doesn't have the heart to do anything but smile back. It’s awkward as hell but he likes Bob’s blunt honesty a damn sight better than the way the rest of the county dances around his damage. 

“Thanks Bob.”

“I heard about Helen. Give her my best wishes?”

“I’ll do that.”

Bob reaches out and gives Raylan a gentle punch on the shoulder, like they’re friends, which they never were, not in high school, not after when they worked the mines, definitely not in the twenty years Raylan maintained blissful radio silence with all the residents of Harlan County. That never seemed to stop Bob though, not even when they were kids. “So how you been, aside from the whole, ya know,” he wiggles his fingers, “thing? What are you doing now that you’re back in town?”

Raylan has no idea what fucking madness makes him tell Bob about the shop and his frustrations with the lack of progress. Maybe it’s the fact that the only people he’s talked to about it are Helen, who couldn’t give a shit about the technical aspects of his new undertaking and is just glad that he's got something, and DeeDee, who has her own family to worry about and can only listen to him complain about the same work problem so many times. 

It made him miss Lucia and Saleem. He knew they were a phone call away but he just- he couldn’t. 

So Bob freaking Sweeney heard it instead. Jesus. Injury, age, or cabin fever were making him soft.

Needless to say he is surprised when Bob goes “Oh, you should talk to Everett. My sister-in-law’s husband's brother? He’s a contractor down in Middlesboro. I can get you his number if you like. I mean, he won’t give you the family discount of course but he's honest and he does good work.” Then he laughs.

“Yeah,” Raylan says, honestly stunned. “Thanks. That’d be great.”

“Great. I have no idea if you’ll like him but my brother’s shoe store remodeling came out pretty as a picture. A real Better Homes and Gardens deal.”

“I don’t know if I want my place to look like an Atlanta housewife’s kitchen.”

That makes Bob laugh so hard he spills his fountain drink on Raylan’s shoes. He offers to get him a new pair from his brother’s store. Raylan turns him down, gently, but he does take Everett’s number and when he tells Bob it’s all fine, he means it. 

Everett is younger than Raylan by about ten years, cheerful, friendly, asks a fair price and accepts the offer Raylan makes to get the work done in half the time. Turns out that adage about the fast, good and cheap triangle of contracting is true, and Raylan has the money to get the fast and good sides so Everett gets to work on it with his crew like he means it. Unfortunately, part of the reason Everett does good work, fast or cheap, is because he has been recently born again in the blood of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Raylan’s not particularly thrilled by this last detail. He doesn’t care much what a man believes but Everett keeps feeling the need to ask Raylan about his life and what he thinks his purpose is and about his relationship with Jesus. If Raylan didn’t need the man to to tear out and replace the old linoleum and to build him the counters that are going to cover the industrial freezers in the storefront, he’d be tempted to threaten him with violence. He’s just so persistent and sincere with it.

“You were saved from certain death, Raylan,” Everett says, for what feels like the hundredth time, because not only did Everett watch FoxNews like the rest of Kentucky, Bob told him the gritty details. Of course he did. Bob tells everyone, everything, all the time. “That sounds like the hand of Jesus reaching out and touching you personally, brother.”

Jesus never showed up when he was staring at bloody pieces of himself lying on the ground, hurting so badly he was hallucinating (though he did see his his mother, Winona, Helen, Arlo, and Boyd... mostly Boyd). Jesus wasn’t on the SEAL team that took out the Miami cartel defenses on the plantation. Jesus wasn’t flying the medevac helo that picked him up and flew him out of that hatefully humid hellhole. His survival has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with him being a stubborn asshole who refused to die even when his innards were sitting in his lap. 

“Your insight’s always…unique,” Raylan muses as he looks around the mess that will be his shop. “How’re we doing here though?” 

“Another two weeks, a month at the most. The boys are happy to work on a project that’s inside instead of out this time of year and with the early competition bonus carrot hanging over this job they’re busting their bottoms off for you.”

Raylan mouths the word “bottoms” to himself because honestly, What kind of grown man talks like that?

“Great. Keep me posted.”

The rest of his time is fairly evenly divided between the McClaren house and Helen’s. 

Helen is grouchy and angry in a way Raylan recognizes all too well from when he was the one with a broken body trapped in a bed and a wheelchair. She’s moving better than he did at that point, but that doesn’t stop her from calling him and Arlo hateful names, throwing things, and occasionally trying to get them to shout back at her or even throw a punch. So far, they haven’t risen to the bait when it comes to physical displays (although Arlo is more than willing to scream the house down at her as she curses him for ever being born). It’s the only time Raylan’s ever been even remotely satisfied with Arlo’s behavior as a spouse to any of the women in his life because she is doing better, maybe despite herself. 

He thinks that might also be because all of Harlan trickles through in a steady stream, to make small talk and play cards or ply her with food or generally make themselves a nuisance. Raylan is not envious. Just because he spent this part of his recovery in a rehab center with nothing but physical therapists, nurses and volunteers for company with the exception of Lucia's legal visits as he dragged himself up from rock bottom to something approaching human again doesn't mean Helen has to do the same. 

The circumstances are vastly different and besides, it's over now. He's walking (albeit with his cane most of the time), he's taking care of someone besides himself for a change, and he's building Any Givens Sundae as part of something like a team. It's a new normal. 

Daniel is the most helpful with that. That should be surprising, considering he’s still in junior high, but it isn’t. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and he grew up fast. He actually knows what people like and what they want. 

“Power outlets,” Daniel had insisted when Raylan drew up the first plans. “At all the tables. And chairs it ain’t a misery to sit in. And wifi. Lotsa kids in my class ain't got any. Hell, Gramps’ connection’s kind of a crapshoot.” The Walmart, Daniel felt compelled to point out, has free wifi though which is probably another part of its appeal. Raylan took him at his word and spends a lot of time working out a corporate communication package that will actually work in Harlan and making sure that the electrician wires the place for 20 plus chargers on top of freezers, lights, and A/C.

He lets Daniel and DeeDee thin the selection on furniture. He’s never been much for interior decorating but they keep pestering him until he finally snaps, "Mostly, I don't care so long as it's somewhere people will want to be, a place to go instead of loitering around behind the gas station or wherever the kids go when they're avoiding doing their homework nowadays." Everything they pick is clean lines and comfortable materials - slick stone counters, padded stools, soft chairs and even a couple couches. 

He has final approval but if he's going to go down this insane road, he might as well go all in.  
So mostly that means he vetoes prints on anything. Blacks, whites, grays, and some blue and green in the accents are enough for him, thank you kindly. He wants this place to be somewhere he can actually tolerate spending 80 hours a week. 

All told, it takes three months to turn the place from a claptrap foreclosure into a modern reimagining of a country ice cream parlor, which even a business newbie like him knows is insanely fast. 

DeeDee smiles. "I think it's great. If it's half as inviting to other people as it feels to me, you'll be fighting them off with a stick to keep them at fire marshal capacity."

"Only you would think that."

"That's because I remember you setting fire to the chemistry tables," she says fondly.

"This is an ice cream store, Mrs. Tippett. No flammables here." Raylan protests. "And that wasn't me. That was-"

"Boyd. I recall." She smiles her big dimpled smile. "But if you tell me you didn't encourage him, I will never believe you."

He bats at her with his cane but not with any real intent. She dodges, laughing. As the sound echoes through the large space, Raylan realizes it's the first real, belly deep laugh he's heard from her since he met her again all those months ago. 

He tilts his head as she moves away to inspect the freezer units, checking to make sure they're good enough for her precious confection creations. She's grinning and proud as she studies them and he realizes that she looks young again, like the beautiful girl he knew in high school.

That makes this whole undertaking worth it already, Raylan decides, as he tries hard to hide the fond smile he knows must be pushing at his lips, just seeing her look like that in a world without Dwayne Tippett. Everything else is a cherry on top.

~*~*~

The first day has been a busy one. The opening of a new store is not something that happens often in Harlan County, especially not one selling something as frivolous as ice cream. Opening on a Saturday had been a good idea because seems like every kid in the county has dragged their parents in. He's made so many cones and banana splits his nose is getting frostbites. He makes a joke about losing his fingers on Mount Everest or Fiji or Kilimanjaro or the Antarctic Blood Falls in search of the best ice cream flavors any time anyone under the age of eighteen glances at his hands. By the time he takes a break for lunch and hands over the scoop to Daniel, he's pleasantly tired and has told a few good stories.

He's just finished the sandwich DeeDee so generously made for him, ham and cheese with tomato, lettuce and a pickle, when a truck roars into his parking lot. It's not unlike every other loud, oversized truck in eastern Kentucky, but out of the passenger seat of this one pours one Boyd fucking Crowder, grinning like the Cheshire cat and looking like he does in about 20 years' worth of fantasies, only marred by the huge, hideous swastika tattoo on his exposed bicep.

He spots Raylan across the asphalt and speeds up, and damn if Raylan doesn't stand to meet him on pure reflex. "Look at you! An apron and a collared shirt, lookin' good. Lookin' like a businessman." And then he's in Raylan's arms, a casual friendly hug that they both know is so much more than friendly even if nothing they do or say shows it. When they both pull back scant seconds later, Boyd claps him on the shoulder and looks up at Raylan's hat. "Now see," he says, looking back at his companion who was climbing out of the car after him. "That's how you wear a hat, all casual." He says, staring back at his companion as he gestures at the Marlins cap that has become a permanent fixture on Raylan's person since he first pulled it on after Helen's shooting. "Not down on your goddamn ears like you do." And then his dark eyes and intense focus are all back on Raylan. "I hear you're setting down roots here Raylan."

"You believe that?" Raylan asks, his chest tight like it hasn't been since he got Helen safely back home, maybe like it hasn't been since he woke up in that private hospital in Managua and was told, in halting English, that he'd never be back to normal again.

"Not if you say it ain't so."

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

Boyd makes a soft sound that is neither assent nor disagreement before his eyes dart to the sign. Then he's grinning, huge and white and straight. "Any Givens Sundae. Why Raylan, if that isn't poetry, I don't know what is."

""And you would know. You always liked English class more than me." 

"You liked it well enough, if I recall correctly," Boyd says. 

And that's true. He'd like it when Boyd read their assigned books to him, out in a field or down on the bed of a crick under a tree, Raylan's head on his thigh, Boyd's long fingers tangled in his hair as his voice cascaded over them. The poetry had made sense when Boyd spoke the words like they never did, cold and dead in print. He shrugs and Boyd's grin doesn't grow so much as it twitches and he knows, goddamnit, Boyd is remembering that too.

"Not much call for poetry in the ice cream industry."

"No, I don't reckon there is." Boyd agrees. "You going to sell me a cone? I always was partial to strawberry and I drove all the way here from the holler after all."

And Raylan is tempted. He really is. Boyd looks good. He'd felt good. He fucking _smelled_ e good when he'd been in Raylan's arms. But he has a goddamn swastika on his arm right out where anyone can see and there was a black church blown up recently and Raylan doesn't need to be a Marshal anymore to know it was Boyd.

"Sorry, Boyd. I'm afraid I can't."

That actually made Boyd gape at him. "I'm sorry. I think I must have misheard you. Did you just deny me service?"

"I'm a private business owner. I've got the right to deny service to anyone I want. No shirts, no shoes, no service. We also don't serve anyone who propagates hateful rhetoric." He points at Boyd's arm. "Can't let you in."

Boyd's smile returns. "Well you should've said. I've got a jacket in the truck. Devil?" He turns to his friend-cum-chauffeur. "Go run back to the truck and grab my jacket?"

"No," Raylan says, shaking his head. "I'm not letting you in there with that on you, or him for that matter. A rebel flag is one thing. I'd have to keep out the whole county, but Nazis? Jesus Boyd." He shakes his head. He takes a step forward and drops his voice to a sharp whisper. "What are you doing? Eleventh grade I seem to remember someone forcing me to sit through Night, and Anne Frank, and fucking Sophie's Choice. You wouldn't even let me just watch the movie."

"Raylan." Boyd's dark eyes are bright with something fierce and not a little angry. "You don't understand."

"No. I don't. Now I'm going to have to politely ask you to leave. This here is private property."

Raylan watches Boyd's face shut hard like Arlo slamming a door on his mother's hand. The only sign of his true distress left is the tic in the muscle beneath his jaw. He gives Raylan another smile, this one faker than his father's apologies. "Well then, I'll be on my way." He winks but that's hollow too. "If I had a hat this is where I'd tip it."

"Yeah." He clears his throat. He finished the sandwich ten minutes ago but it feels like it jumped back up to choke him. "I'll see you around."

"That you will, Raylan. That you most certainly will."

~*~*~

Boyd turns up again the next day, this time with a painfully thin brunette on his arm. Raylan is relieved the shop is empty (he doesn’t want to face Boyd again in front of an audience on his second day) but not surprised. It’s only noon on a Sunday when Boyd strolls in with his girl and even though Raylan unlocked the place a half hour before, most folks in Harlan County likely ain’t even got out of church yet. He has no doubt Boyd did that on purpose. 

“Boyd,” Raylan says curtly, “Pretty sure I made myself clear yesterday about my stance on allowing hatemongers into my place of business.”

“Well, now, Raylan, Ellen May here has been looking forward to your opening and she couldn’t make it. I hope you’ll understand that I’m not making a purchase for myself, but for the young lady here who has no affiliation with any organization that might be on the Anti-Defamation League watchlist. Surely you won’t deny her the pleasure of a scoop because of little old me?”

Raylan shrugs. The girl, Ellen May, has the glassy expression of a junkie on a functional high and Raylan would bet his remaining fingers that she’s one of Audrey’s girls. To be honest, he’s a little flattered at the effort, but he is not playing this playing game with Boyd. 

“Well then, Miss Ellen May, you are welcome and I will greatly appreciate your business.” He says, flashing her the grin that got Winona to let him buy her that first drink, the one that has worked on the dozens of girls (and a scant handful of men) he’s chased down since he was fifteen.

She blushes and smiles and giggles a little. “Aw, that’s okay. I just wanted to see it. Not much new ever happens in Harlan.”

“No it does not,” he agrees. “But this new place isn’t going to have of that old skinhead bullshit in it. Making a safe places for kids to come, like none of us had.” 

“Oh wow,” Ellen May says, her whole face lighting up. Her eyes have the oxy glaze over them but the sunshine rays of sincerity show through. “That’s so nice.”

“I think so. Unfortunately,” he turns and lets his face get hard as he focuses on Boyd, “Boyd here’s carrying some Nazi garbage on his skin, which means he needs to leave my store because if I have to tell him again?" He pauses and reaches down with his right hand (his thumb, middle, and mess of an index finger more than strong enough to do some simple lifting) and pulls up a sawed off he keeps beneath the register. Ever since he was injured, he may have been practicing how to use a gun again. Now he's grateful because he doesn't have to hesitate as he swings it into his left hand and levels the barrel over his right forearm to make up for the fact that he really can't aim for shit as a lefty. He makes sure it's pointed at Boyd with Ellen May well clear before gracing them both with a smile that's all teeth like the gators he left behind in Florida. "I’m going to be telling him through the barrel of this here shotgun I use to keep assholes from bothering the kids that come in.” 

Boyd's hands go up slowly. "Now Raylan, I think you might be being a bit rash here."

"No Boyd, I don't believe I am."

Ellen May, smart girl that she is under her high, takes a step back. 

"I told you no. Not a hard thing to understand, the concept of no. Just two letters, after all, and I know you've got a keen understanding of language. All you have to do is respect it so I can get the lady here her ice cream and get back to work. There doesn't need to be any trouble, does there?"

Boyd's eyes are wide and dark. He isn't frowning exactly but the corners of his lips are turned down into something grim. And, maybe, contemplative. "No, Raylan, I believe I understand."

"Good. Now." He turns his attention back to Ellen May, shotgun trained on Boyd all the while. “Is there anything you want to try, Miss Ellen May? Samples are free.”

“Can I try the blueberry bourbon ice cream?” She asks. She still seems pretty damn nervous about the gun but this is Harlan. Assholes pointing guns at each other are a part of everyday life and mostly, she's as excited as a little kid about the prospect of free ice cream.

“You. Most certainly may, just as soon as Mr. Crowder gets his Aryan Nation ass out of my store.” He turns and gives Boyd a hard look over the spot where the sight would be on any less-battered weapon. “You don’t want to make a lady wait do you, Boyd? I know your daddy raised you better than that.”

Boyd gives him a smile that's looks like it's been pulled up by strings like a puppet on strings and fishes a twenty out of his pocket. He holds it out towards Ellen May, arm outstretched all the way to the side. “You get yourself a sundae, darlin’. I just want a scoop of vanilla.” 

She looks at him with the kind of startled delight most girls only ever give their fathers. Raylan wants to hit him but he hasn’t been able to make a proper fist in over a year. He'd settle for a smaller caliber weapon that would just take him out at the knees for the way she practically gushes, “Okay, Boyd.”

"If you'd lower that firearm, I'll be on my way.” Raylan concedes by dropping the barrel so that it'd take out his legs instead of his chest. 

Boyd gives Raylan a salute that looks very correct. “Deputy Marshal Givens." 

“Mister will do me fine. From outside.” He jerks his chin and Boyd saunters out, as if it were his idea in the first place. Raylan does not let himself sigh in relief when the bell on the door rings, signaling Boyd’s exit. No, he stays focused on the job at hand, replacing the shotgun before returning his attention on Ellen May and her sample requests.

“Blueberry bourbon you said?”

“Yeah. And can I try the Bennett Apple Pie too, please?

Raylan reaches for two sample spoons with his good (better) hand and smiles at her. “You got it.”

~*~*~

Raylan isn't out cold when the banging comes at his door but he'd been tantalizingly close. He's only been in business a week, but ever since Any Givens Sundae crossed from Under Construction into Preparing to Open, he's been reliably provided the kind of physical and mental exhaustion that delivers him into dreamless sleep every night. That hasn't changed now that he's shifted from painting walls and pushing furniture around to left-handed scooping ice cream, careful right-handed ringing up of orders, and mopping floors. Hard work is hard work but damnit, he wants that sleep. 

For a couple of minutes, he thinks they'll give up and go away, he's a stubborn ass that way, but apparently so is whoever is at his door. Goddamnit. 

He rolls out of bed and glances around for a shirt and ends up shrugging into a worn thin Florida Gators shirt that has holes in the neck and a paint stains from work in the store. But it's thinner than tissue paper and it's the end of spring, already getting hot, and it's late. He's in pajama pants and whoever it is has invaded his space, so they can deal with him as is. He leaves his cane as well because he's too tired to bend over and pick it up off the fucking floor and not too stubborn to limp the few short feet too the door at ass-o'clock in the morning as he rubs the spots out of his eyes.

The knocking is still going when he gets there, as loud and aggressive as ever. He glances behind the jamb to where he'd left Helen's trusty Remington Wingmaster leaned muzzle down against the wall when he moved in (after loading it and checked that the pump action was still moving smoothly) before looking through the peephole at his "guest". 

"What the fuck?" 

For a split second, Raylan is tempted to pick the gun up. However, the last time he aimed a shotgun at this man, he stood down, so he's going to guess that he didn't turn up at Helen's house just to blow Raylan away. It's just not Boyd's style. He was more liable to talk him to death than shoot him. Still, he switches the Remington to the other side of the wall where it would be out of sight but not out of reach, before steeling himself and opening the door, coming out cranky which was just as good as swinging.

“Boyd?” He demands, all piss and vinegar because it is past midnight after all. In Miami, this could be considered by some to be just the end of an evening, but in Harlan, the streets are rolled up by nine and it's lights out at ten. Without an outlaw daddy under the same roof, there’s no good reason Raylan can think of for Boyd to be washing up on his doorstep in the early hours of the morning. There’s a few he’s fantasized about since he moved in, but they don’t leave Boyd looking so stricken. “The hell’re you doin’ here?”

"Good evening," Boyd says, genteel like they've run into each other at a church barbeque instead of what very well could be a clandestine meeting under cover of darkness. "I wanted you to know that I've had some time to think since you shoved a gun in my face a few days previous."

Raylan frowns and leans against the doorjamb. If he'd known Boyd was going to be on the other side of the door, he'd've brought his cane with him to help hold himself up because in the thirty-five years they've known each other, give or take, Boyd has never been one to be brief.

"I'm happy for you. I'm sure it was a struggle."

"I thought at first it was unwarranted, but then I got to reflecting on our situations, shared and distinct, and realized that perhaps I could see where you were coming from."

Raylan blinks into the darkness. "Is that an apology?"

Boyd drags his fingers through his hair so it stands up even more wildly than the last couple times Raylan saw him, emphasizing his aura of slightly frantic distress. “No. I don't know."

"Well as long as you're clear." 

"Look here, it’s like this. I-“ He stops and rubs his face with both hands. He tugs his hair a few times, making him look even wilder, before swallowing and starting again.“Raylan, did you know you became a regular on the local news, when you got taken down in Nicaragua?”

Raylan blinks. “I did?”

“Oh, you were national news - Fed kidnapped out of the country.” Boyd shakes his head. “But you were local, so the morning and evening news had you too. You were everywhere. Only, you’d been gone for twenty-goddamn years and we all knew it. It was pathetic, watching this sad little town try to grab at your glory like you meant something to them.”

“Is there a point to this, Boyd?”

“I remember saying to myself, ‘he’s already gone.’ That whole damn week, I said to myself over and over you were already gone so what the fuck did I care that you was missing in South America?” 

“If this is supposed to make me get me to let you in the shop-“

“But you weren’t gone yet. You left Harlan, sure, but that’s different. You were there, I knew you were still there. Raylan,” Boyd takes a step forward into the doorway, into his space, “I stopped with the bullshit when I heard you’d been found.”

“This is what it looks like when you’re sincere? Jesus Christ Boyd, what does it look like when you're fucking with someone?”

“Listen,” Boyd says, strained but even. “That goddamn video leaked not a day after Helen got on a plane to go see you. The 24-hour news channels couldn’t stop playing it, edited for content of course.”

“Of course.”

Boyd glares at him. “I see you bleeding when I close my eyes and now you come back to Harlan, and both of us are still standing upright and breathing, so you go right ahead and put a shotgun in my face, or put a knife to my throat, or whatever you need, I don't give a shit. I want to kiss you, all right? We both survived this long, and we’re here. That is an embarrassment of goddamn miracles, Raylan Givens. So let me kiss you?”

Raylan feels…annoyed. An exasperated grunt escapes his nostrils in a huff. 

Boyd tilts his head in inquiry. 

“Well, I can’t very well say no to that, can I?” He takes a step back and opens the door a little wider. “You going to come in, or you going to stand on my aunt’s porch all night?”

“I was under the impression,” Boyd says, stepping forward, into the doorway, into the house that has been Raylan’s haven for so many years, “that Ms. Helen lived on the other side of town.”

“She still has the deed. It’s her house.”

“Fair point.” Strong fingers hook into the belt-loops of his jeans on both sides and gently push him back into the house. Raylan forces himself not to think about how he is physically unable to return the gesture. He lets the heat of Boyd’s body drown out that little ugly voice as it crowds against his own. 

Then Boyd has to open his mouth and ruin it. 

“Lord, Raylan, last time I was this close to you-“

“I was whole.”

“No,” Boyd soothes. “We was kids. You’re plenty whole.”

“You know, Boyd, considering what a slippery son of a bitch you are, I am surprised to realize that this might be the first time you’ve ever lied to my face.”

“I have never lied to you. Obfuscated, omitted details, refused to respond, yes. But I’ve never lied to you.”

“Boyd-“

Boyd lets go of his waist to grab the back of his neck with his right hand. “You’re still a grouchy, arrogant son of a bitch who thinks his shit don’t stink, is stubborn as the day is long and strong as a pack mule. Raylan,” his hand feels like it’s burning as it squeezes, tight but somehow still gentle. “The man you’ve become has been scarred with badges of courage I would not wish upon my worst enemies, yes, but hear me. You are still the same terrible, beautiful asshole I’ve loved the whole of my miserable life and I must confess it pains me something awful to know that you can’t see that.”

Raylan closes his eyes against Boyd. He gave Boyd permission but he still wants to shut out those dark eyes and the neo-Nazi ink and the lips that held a piece of his soul for the last twenty fucking years. He can’t manage it. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, Boyd's presence pushes through to the core of him.

“I wanted you there,” he admits. The words feel like they are dragged over hot coals. “Had my guts in my goddamn lap and I could see the sky but you weren’t there.” He drops his head forward and Boyd’s forehead is there to meet him. “First time in my life I wished I was down in that hole. I was in the sunshine like I’d always hoped for as a kid but the whole time Tommy Bucks had me in that godforsaken jungle.” He rolls his forehead against Boyd’s just to feel his skin, the brush of his hair, a reminder that he’s not back out in the equatorial heat but here in entryway of his aunt’s house with the boy he never stopped loving. “I’d’ve given anything to be dying in the dark with you.”

“You don’t get to die at all,” Boyd snarls, hot and furious against his face, both hands gripping his head tight between his palms. “I'm not going to live to watch you die. Together or me first. You hear me, Raylan Givens? Me first.”

Raylan doesn’t point out that he’s not a lawman anymore. Gio sent his niece to speak to Raylan the first day of the Grand Jury hearing with a message that the Miami Cartel held no grudge. She told him that as long as he came after no other members of his team then Gio would cash out Tommy Bucks as a cost of doing business, the same way the Marshals were writing off Raylan’s broken body. Before Nicaragua, Raylan would have threatened her, old Harlan pride and older Harlan anger demanding it but he’s realistic underneath all of it - Helen Givens' child in every way but birth. He accepted that truce and the fact that there is no danger left if he doesn’t go looking for it. 

He’s a small business owner now, a man with an ice cream shop, so he just nods and lets Boyd kiss him and kiss him and kiss him because if he thought he could get the same kind of promise out of Boyd, he might be liable to try. 

“You first,” Raylan concedes into his mouth as he stumbles backwards on legs that don’t work like they used to. “Boyd, Jesus.”

“Let me. Let me,” Boyd growls, cutting himself off with greedy and hungry kisses to everything he can reach - his mouth, his jaw, his neck, under his ear, beneath his eye. “Let me.”

Raylan does. They land on the floor with an ugly thud and he lets Boyd. After, when they’re both sweaty and their pants are shoved down around their knees, Raylan lets him. 

He lets Boyd hold him, kiss him, touch him in a way that might even called making love. It’s some of the most sloppily tame and devastatingly intimate sex he’s ever had in his life, bar none. He doesn’t cry because he’s not a crier but there’s definitely a burn in his throat and a sting behind his closed eyelids when they come together, panting and kissing on the ancient shag carpet.

Boyd climbs to his feet after and pulls Raylan up after him, uncaring (or perhaps unbothered is a better word) of Raylan’s impairments as he hustles them to the bedroom. Raylan doesn’t remark on the fact that Boyd still remembers where the bedroom is, even though he’d only come here a half dozen times before, more than twenty years ago. It seems like it would detract from the moment that Boyd makes himself at home in the bed Raylan has started to think of as his own.

He hasn’t slept beside someone he truly cared for since Winona left him for their goddamn realtor. The fact that the person he’s breaking that streak for is Boyd Crowder is not something he ever would have expected when she walked away. That doesn’t make it feel any less right once he’s crawled half naked between the sheets hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder with him, their hands brushing on the mattress. The sound of Boyd’s steady breathing is better than any music or white noise machine and he’s half asleep in minutes.

But Boyd opens his mouth, says “You know, Raylan,” into the dark, ruining Raylan’s twilight before he can reach full R.E.M. Of course he does. 

“No,” Raylan groans, trying to remember why he agreed to this. He knows that not half an hour ago they were rutting on the floor in the best kind of reunion but jolted out of a doze he finds that hard to recall. “I do not.”

“For everything you and I have been through and done over our storied past together, I don’t believe we’ve ever shared this particular experience before.” 

Raylan curses this man and his own curiosity and weakness for the things he has to say. “And what’s that?”

“Spent the night in a real bed.” He’s on Raylan’s right but he takes his hand anyway. “Sleeping. Together.” He doesn’t lace their fingers together because Raylan doesn’t have the digits for it, but he holds on.

Raylan closes his eyes, surprised to find how different the darkness is behind his eyes from the shadows on the ceiling and scans his memories and finds that Boyd is right. They’d dozed in the back of that old hand-me-down truck and passed out on couches and floors like puppies at parties where alcohol made closeness acceptable, and they’d curled together in shared sleeping bags in a small tent when camping up in the hills. but lying together in a real bed wasn’t safe for boys like them with family like theirs in a town like Harlan. 

Raylan can still taste Boyd on his tongue and he thinks that this sort of sentimentality fits him here in the darkness. It’d be too tight for his skin in the light. That’s why he doesn’t pull his hand away. That and the fact that goddamnit, he doesn’t want to.

“Real bed’s more comfortable than a truck bed.” He offers because he has his own way with words but not like Boyd. 

“I do prefer it,” Boyd agrees.

“Maybe come over earlier next time and we can use it for more than sleeping.”

He can actually hear Boyd smile at that. “Next time, I will.”

No one can see when Raylan rolls towards Boyd on the bed. It's just them and the only illumination is a few struggling rays of starlight fighting through the curtains. What he does is between them, the linens and the pillows. Besides, as Boyd settles down to sleep, he turns toward Raylan too. 

~*~*~

Raylan can admit to being surprised on the day when Cincinnati Reds and Blondie turn up at his store. They're still attached at the hip, still stinking of weed, still looking surly and sullen in turn but they don't seem to be looking to cause trouble. 

They walk up and down the freezers, looking at the flavors. Occasionally Reds will say something biting about one of the flavors and Blondie will either roll his eyes or give a hint of a smile or elbow him and tell him not to be a shithead. Raylan doesn't do anything but wait. The point of this place is to give kids, particularly boys like them, a space to exist without forcing a fight. If they ask for a sample he'll let them have it. If they buy something he'll serve them. If they start shit he will physically kick them out. But he's got no rules against being a smartass or a shithead so long as it doesn't cause any trouble. 

In the end, it's Blondie who rocks up to the register. "Can I get a scoop of dark chocolate in a cup?" 

"That going to be it for you?"

He nods. "Emmett wants Black Cherry Cordial in a sugar cone."

"Billy, jesus."

"What? You do."

Emmett's ears go as red as his hat. "You're not paying for that. Come on."

"I was sure you'd drop out like a pussy so consider it a congratulations for finishing out the year." Billy says with a shrug.

"Just because I'm not a nerd," Emmett grouses. 

" Whatever. You'll get it next time and we got all summer for you to get me back." He hands over a ten. It's more than the two ice creams cost but from the way Emmett looks, it is more than he has. 

Raylan nods and takes it. "Sprinkles are always free. Either of you want 'em?"

"Not if it's charity," Emmett snaps.

"Yep," Billy says. "Rainbow or chocolate?"

"Either or. Don't matter."

"Rainbow's good for me." 

Raylan turns to get a scooper out of the hot water where they sat and tried not to smile when he heard a low grouchy voice say, "Chocolate," it felt like the best kind of victory.

"Sure thing, Red."

He turned back with the scooper in time to see Billy laughing at his friend. "Red. I told you if you wore that all the time you'd end up with a reputation. I fucking told you, Dare."

Emmett's face now matched his ears as well as his hat. "Shut the fuck up."

"Aw, Red, don't be that way. I'm sure Mr. Givens meant it as a compliment."

"I'm not letting some cripple give me a stupid nickname like that."

Raylan didn't flinch. They couldn't be more than sixteen. He'd been a shit when he was sixteen. "You should be careful who you call names, Red. I could probably take enough pieces off you that we'd match."

Emmett goes very still and looks at him with wide eyes, genuinely scared for a long moment as Raylan forms a perfect scoop of DeeDee's artisan dark chocolate for Billy before applying the sprinkles with the same precision he used to use on the firing of his sidearm. He sets it carefully on top of the freezer before moving on. Billy snatches it up and tries not to laugh around his first bite and only marginally succeeds, smirking around the plastic spoon. 

After he makes Emmett's cone he holds it out with his right hand, thumb and middle finger making a secure but gruesome grip that he can't avoid. He meets his eyes with a smile. "Mrs. Tippett's best Black Cherry Cordial. She uses the best local cherries, you know. You'll have to let me know what you think, Red. She's always looking for feedback. It's an evolving artform to her."

Billy actually has set his ice cream down to keep from choking on it as he laughs. Raylan's only managing not to crack because he has years of experience staring down hardened criminals without breaking his poker face. Watching Emmett weigh the value of his free ice cream over the obvious dare of Raylan's challenge is played all over his face and he looks like the kid he is, not the man he's been pretending to be. 

It's not an understatement to say Raylan feels like a champion when Emmett caves and takes the ice cream out of his hand and doesn't flinch. It's not an understatement to say that the look of bliss on his face on the first taste makes him feel like a king. It's not a understatement to say that the look of fondness on Billy's face as he looks at his face makes him feel like more of a hero than he did on most days in the Marshals Service.

"How'd you lose the fingers anyway?" Emmett asks, because apparently nutting up makes him feel he has carte blanche to ask anything. 

Raylan doesn't blame him, but one cone doesn't merit the real deal. "I thought it looks better this way. Took 'em off myself one at a time with a ginsu knife and donated 'em to some hungry cannibals I know. They're pretty fond of white meat and it's hard to come by free range in this economy."

"Fine, be that way." Emmett actually pouts but he keeps eating his cone. "We can just leave."

"Or you can stay." Raylan offers. "Lots of places to sit." School let out for summer yesterday so it is a little crowded than it normally would be on a Thursday at eleven-forty-five, but it's still pretty sparse. 

He can see it in their faces when they have to decide. The conflict flickers across their face like the reels on an old film project changing over. It takes longer but when they exchange happens, it smooths out just the same way. 

"We could stay," Emmett says, cool as you please with a casual shrug. 

"Oh well, if it doesn't put you out."

Billy doesn't wait for either of them. He just drops into one of the overstuffed chairs in front of a coffee table. He does have enough manners to toe out of his shoes before putting his socked feet up on said table though, Raylan'll give him that, so he doesn't correct him. Emmett actually kicks his legs until he puts them down. They're good kids and he thinks they're going to stay.

When Daniel shows up to cover Raylan's lunch break an hour and a half later, Billy and Emmett are still parked on the couch. They've pulled down the busted monopoly board, generously donated by DeeDee, from the single small shelf in a back corner, which they'd installed a week into business because Daniel made a passing remark about how it'd be nice to give people something to do while they were here. They're arguing in very quiet but very passionate tones about one of the properties as Raylan hands over his favorite scoop to Danny. 

"Keep an eye on them," he says softly. "They flip the board and make a mess and don't clean it up, you come get me."

"I can handle them," Danny says firmly. It's summer now, the shop's been open three months, and Danny's turned fifteen. He'll be starting high school come August. Really he should be a sophomore (but Dwayne's death held him back a year, DeeDee told him and ain't no shame in that) and he's more a man every day. He's not Raylan's son but that doesn't stop him from being damn proud. 

"I know you can, but come get me anyway. Liability and the child labor laws and all that."

This appeases Daniel enough for Raylan to slip into the back, grab his turkey sandwich and coke, and duck outside to a spot at one of the tables with umbrellas spread wide to make up for what shade the trees didn't already provide. 

Boyd is already there, in long sleeves despite the boiling heat, looking cool as a tall glass of sweet tea, with a sandwich of his own. His looks to be roast beef and it's already half gone when he looks up to acknowledge Raylan's presence. 

"You're late," Boyd observes as Raylan leans his cane against the table and eases into the chair across from him.

"I make my own schedule so I could argue that you're early."

"You could, but you so rarely win arguments against me when firearms aren't involved that I don't see the point."

"I'm sure you have some quote tucked away about the merits of fighting futile battles."

The corner of Boyd's lip quirks up. "Tilting at windmills."

Raylan allows himself to smile back. "Knew it."

"Cervantes is a good read. You should give him a try. I bet you could relate to Don Quixote."

"You know I don't got time to sit around reading that shit. I've got a business to run." 

"Maybe I'll convince you to try it anyway," Boyd says with a careful shrug. It should be nothing but it makes Raylan go literally hot under the collar because he thinks Boyd's talking about reading to him again. It's been more than 20 years since they did that and yeah, he could probably lie still for that, after they fuck maybe, or when he's drifting off. Jesus. A few weeks of regular orgasms and he's turned back into his high school self.

"Didn't convince me to let you inside my place of business," he points out because he can't let himself be seen to be bested quite so easily. 

"Well one's based on a fair principle and one's just you being a stubborn ass, ain't it?" Boyd's smile goes all the way up to his eyes, all Army-financed pearly whites. "And I got you to let me on the property didn't I?"

"With conditions." Raylan grumbles. "Due to extenuating circumstances."

"Yeah, well, speaking of those circumstances," Boyd laces his fingers together. The ugly letters on his fingers aren't quite as distracting as they once were. "I gotta get away for a bit, handle some business."

Raylan pauses, waiting. When over a minute ticks away and Boyd doesn't say anything Raylan huffs. "What? You looking for permission?"

"No. Just informing you of the coming events. It's what friends do."

"Is that what we are? Friends?"

Boyd's toothy grin goes soft. "I'd hope that's the very least of what we are, Raylan."

"Do I want to know what your business is?"

"Ask me again when I get back."

"And if you end up in county?" 

"You can still ask me."

Raylan sighs. This shit, right here, is what he doesn't miss about Boyd, or Harlan, or any of it. He knew though, when he opened that door and invited Boyd in, that this was part of the package just like the tattoos and the twisting tongue and the terrifying devotion. Boyd doesn't ask him to change, so he can't very ask for change either.

"Don't do anything stupid."

He lights up, delighted, and presses a hand to his chest. "Why Raylan, I'm touched."

"I'm not bailing you out just 'cause you know I've got money."

"That is a sweet sentiment, but I promise I am more than capable of caring for myself should there any be fiscal crises that arise."

Raylan snorts at that and Boyd kicks him gently under the table. He leaves his shoe touching Raylan's. If you were walking past, it'd look like absolutely nothing but from where Raylan's sitting, it feels like everything.

~*~*~

Whatever Boyd's business is, he's been out of communication for ten days when Helen drags Arlo into Any Givens Sundae. His father looks like he'd rather be back humping through the Mekong Delta than in his store. The feeling is mutual. 

Helen is glowing. She's clinging to Arlo's arm for support because still won't use a cane or a crutch or anything "when she's out on the town" but she's in an actual skirt and blouse, not just dusty jeans and a work shirt. She's so beautiful his heart stops in his chest and he thinks this is why he stayed. He didn't realize then, but it wasn't because he thought she might die, it because he'd hoped she would live and god but she is so alive.

"What's good here, Raylan?"

"Everything's good, Aunt Helen, except this liver-spotted old goat you married."

"Well that goes without saying."

"DeeDee Tippett's finest. She's actually started getting the cream from the Petersons' cows now? Something about local sources being fashionable. I don't know about that but it sure tastes good."

"Old Gerry McClaren still a lying cocksucker?" Arlo asks, peering into the freezer cases.

A someone who sucked cock less than two weeks ago and enjoyed it immensely, and who has more affection for Gerald McClaren than he's ever had for Arlo Givens, Raylan is doubly offended. "There are kids in here, Arlo, so I'd thank you to watch your mouth." 

Arlo glances around the space that Raylan has built from nothing, at the three clusters of patrons scattered around, a quartet of tween girls whispering and giggling over milkshakes, the kids with jet black hair who have to be siblings under the front window crowded around one badly beaten laptop and sodas, and Billy and Emmett are at the same coffee table playing what Raylan is fairly sure is the same game they started more than a week ago. 

"Ooh, excuse me."

"What can I get you, Aunt Helen?" 

She leans over the plexiglass and blinks. "Does that stuff really use Mags Bennett's Apple Pie?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"You sell moonshine ice cream to kids and I'm the problem?" Arlo drawls.

"You want the alcoholic or non-alcoholic version?" he asks his aunt, blatantly ignoring his father and answering the question at the same time. 

She chuckles. "I think you know the answer to that."

"Can I see some ID?"

"Raylan Givens!"

He laughs a little as he scoops out a sample. She snaps it up with her long, calloused fingers. He watches her face as the canary yellow treat disappears between her lips, as the smirk of amusement morphs into a smile of true enjoyment. Her eyebrows shoot right up to her hairline in surprise and delight and Raylan feels it again, that swelling pride in what he's built here.

"Good, huh? DeeDee figures we could even sell this by the pint."

"I'd buy it," Helen says. She's got the plastic spoon pressed to her lower lip in thought. "Two scoops of Mag's Apple Pie."

"Sprinkles?"

"If you're offering."

"They're always free."

"Yeah, just give them away. You're a terrible businessman," Arlo grumps.

"Well then if you want sprinkles, I can add fifty cents anything you order, Arlo." 

'He makes her order, keeping half an ear out in case Daniel needs something out back, or the kids hanging out in front get rowdy. That's probably why he misses Arlo's insults right up until he's setting Helen's ice cream on the counter and she's telling him to shut up because no one asked his opinion anyway. 

"It's not a penny for your thoughts, here. It's five bucks a piece and you pay them directly to me. So you can either pay up and share whatever it was you felt the need to mutter under your breath or you can just give me the three fifty for Helen's apple pie and move along. I don't rightly care which."

Arlo's mouth curls horribly. "You ain't worth it."

"I could say the same to you." He holds out his right hand, palm up and Helen places a five in it, smiling as if Arlo hadn't even spoken. "One fifty's your change."

"Keep it." She jerks her head at the small mason jar with a blue construction paper label on which Danny had written in precise careful letters 'Tips Are Never Expected But Always Appreciated.' "Call it payment for his filthy mouth."

"Well then, I have to say that you're a little short."

"Go screw yourself," Arlo hisses like a possum caught in a snare. "Helen, get what you came for. We're going."

"I like it here." Helen declares with her lips forming a firm line. "I think I'll have a seat." She pulls her arm out of his and presses it against the counter to hold herself up and points with the hand holding her ice cream at one of the overstuffed chairs that Daniel and DeeDee had rearranged just before the start of the summer for what they called 'flow' (whatever the hell that was). 

"Helen, I'm going home. If you don't want me to leave ya here-"

"I'll find my way home somehow. Young man," She turns and clears her throat. "Do you think you could give me a hand?"

Emmett looks up from the Monopoly board with something just shy of panic. "Ma'am?"

"A hand, son. You've got one. Get up and help an old woman take a seat."

Watching the kid scramble to pull his hat off and practically leap across the room to do as he's told by Helen is the funniest thing Raylan's seen in ages. It's so good that he actually misses Arlo's grumbling exit, too entertained by the way Helen begins fussing over Emmett's mess of brown curls, which are suffering from the worst case of hat hair Raylan's ever seen, and Billy's shameless egging on of the situation as he sneaks twenties out of the plastic Community Bank tray. 

In the end, he's the one who drives her home at close. It's late, too late for her to still be there really, but she'd fallen asleep on the couch for over an hour so he doesn't feel too bad about it. He's mostly just unnerved by the way she sits beside him, seatbelt still buckled, for long minutes after they've parked in the driveway next to the little bargain basement graveyard his father traded for years ago. 

"You need anything?" He asks, helpless to do just about anything else.

Helen just shakes her head and reaches out, pressing her palm to his cheek. "You're a good man, Raylan Givens."

Heat floods his face, fast and dizzying. "I appreciate your good opinion, Aunt Helen," he manages to croak out. It's even true.

She catches his other cheek and pulls him to look her in the eye. "Ain't an opinion, Raylan. It's what you are. I told you to leave, to not come back, but if you had to come back," she squeezes his face between her hands, "This is how I'd have wished it for you. I'm proud of you. Your father may not know it but he's proud and if your mama were alive she'd be too."

Raylan shrugs in her firm grip. "You needed help and I just like ice cream. Simple as that."

"I know what you're doing and other folks can see it too. Keep up the good work." She leans forward to press a hard kiss to his forehead before letting him go. Arlo is on the porch and walking towards the car to take her arm. "Dinner's at seven on Sunday. Bring something 90 proof or better."

"Aunt Helen."

"And don't be late. I hate to serve cold food when that ain't my intention."

"I'm not-"

Arlo bangs on the glass of passenger window with his full fist. "Woman, do you know what time it is? I should've been in bed an hour ago. Thought I was going to have to call the goddamn po-lice."

"Please! Like you've ever gone to sleep before midnight since you were twelve years old," Helen grouses as she shoves the door open, knocking Arlo back a half step. "Seven on Sunday," she repeats as she clambers out. "Don't be late. I'm not too old to tan your hide."

They close at seven anyway on Sundays and Daniel's been itching to close. Raylan figures that since he won't let him during the school year, now's as good a time as any. He refuses to bring any of his stashes so he gets vodka specially, but it's the cheap shit. Its 90 proof, as requested (Helen doesn't serve it and he doesn't ask any questions) and he does not murder his father over the fried chicken, so it's a win all the way around. 

What he's got a problem with is the unsettling discovery that Boyd's rocked back up when he gets back to what he's just starting to think of as His Home in addition to Helen's House. He's wearing that denim jacket of his over a solid black t-shirt and jeans that look older than most of Raylan's clientele, and is perched on the porch rail in the shadow cast by the lone light Raylan left on, like a giant goddamn owl in the darkness, all hooked features and predation. 

"You miss me?" He asks, tilting his head and that's a bit birdlike too. 

Raylan doesn't say anything. He talks more to Boyd than he does to anyone but he still has to be careful what he says or else things he doesn't want to - or isn't ready to - say will come out. Like, he's not sure he won't say _more than half my life_ if he tries to answer that question honestly.

"Should I even bother to ask where you were?"

"I don't know. I suppose that depends," Boyd muses, "On how tight you are with your remaining United States Marshals Service ties."

Not very. Lucia's number is burning a hole in his phone and one of these days he really is going to go up to Lexington and pay a call on Art Mullen. That life is mostly dead and buried, but he was a law enforcement officer and he still lives by the law, even if all he does is keep a legal and honest business where nothing sinister can touch his patrons inside. 

So he just shrugs past Boyd into the house, but he holds the door open once he's inside. He figures that's a good enough answer.

Boyd seems to agree because he pulls Raylan down to the bed without much conversation even though its barely ten pm. It costs Raylan more energy to live life now, even one as slow and steady as that of the proprietor of Any Givens Sundae ice cream shop, than the lawman existence did when he was younger. He gets tired faster, no matter what, but Boyd hasn't made a comment on it so far. As long as he doesn't bring it up, Raylan's got no plans to either. 

He doesn't realize until he's got his arms wrapped around Boyd that he's been fucking scared for two weeks. In the back of every thought, every action, every moment, was the quiet fear that he'd never have this again. Boyd would killed or he'd get arrested or...something. 

If this was what it was like he can't really blame Winona for hightailing it when she did. She knew better. 

Christ, he's always been so fucking weak for the smart ones. 

"Thought you might not be coming back," he manages to admit finally, face firmly tucked into the back of Boyd's neck. 

Boyd's chuckle makes him shake in his arms. "Oh darlin', you didn't think you was going to get rid of me so easily once I caught you now did you? "

"Didn't rightly know, did I?" he grumbles. The words come out of his mouth sounding far too much like something Arlo might say for his liking. That doesn't seem to matter to Boyd because he twists and gives him a sloppy, half-hearted kiss that lands somewhere in the vicinity of his upper lip but not quite.

"Now you do. I'll always come back so long as you do the same, Raylan Givens," he decrees in that way of his that makes simple sentences sound like royal proclamations. It is a lot but it's also a fair trade, one that lets him sleep through the night with his arms around Boyd and wake up the same way. 

After all the unfair shakes he's been given, Raylan can agree to a fair trade.

~*~*~

"I know we've discussed this before. You are not bringing that shi-garbage into my store any day of the week, but especially not on damn Independence Day!" Raylan practically shouts as Boyd steps into Any Givens Sundae like in a pair of black jeans and an American flag shirt under his jacket like he's the one who owns the place.

"The Star Spangled Banner is a perfectly respectable, no, patriotic item to be wearing on the Fourth of July, Raylan. Half of my fellow patrons are wearing some version of our great flag and while it may not be Betsy Ross's rendition which this original holiday would be most appropriately commemorated with, it is still a symbol of freedom and American pride and I am sure I'm well within my rights to wear it."

"You want me to shoot him, Mr. Givens?" Emmett asks. He's scooted from the sundae station to behind the register where Raylan still keeps his sawed off and he's looking twitchy. 

"No. Emmett, when this is settled you and me are going to need to have a conversation about the proper application of firearms." This is the third time Emmett has asked him that question since he started working here a month ago. Raylan does not think it's just because he wants to use the gun, if the way his eyes have gone wide and a little bloodshot have anything to say. "But you… can get the hell out of my store and talk to me about whatever it is you want to discuss after closing."

"Is it because you don't like me anymore, Raylan?" Boyd asks, eyes flashing with humor, cutting a little too close to the edge. He'd gone off again at the end of June and now he's back and acting like this? 

Alright, Raylan doesn't know what _this_ is, but Boyd is still the same boy who liked to play with dynamite. He knows whatever Boyd's pulling here is potentially dangerous and could blow up in their face.

Any Givens Sundae is mostly full today, with families of all things. A lot of them are fractured, single moms trying to make something of the holiday for their kids, but he's got a few multigenerational groups, aunties and uncles and great-cousins-once-removed. Groups of adults and minors of various arrangements have filled all of what he once heard Billy call "the good furniture" and all but one of the umbrella-shaded tables outside. 

He is _not_ having a scene today. Not over his or Boyd's dead body, he's not too picky.

"I think you're well aware of my opinion of you Boyd." Raylan says cool as his product. "My policy on violence and the promotion thereof in my store don't got nothing to do with that. No exceptions." 

"Ah well if that's all, then I am dying to try that ice cream you got made from Mag's apple pie, it bein' the Fourth and all."

"I don't think you're hearing me."

"I hear you just fine, Raylan." He reaches a hand into his pocket and holds it out over the register. Emmett looks ready to jump away from it like the bloodythirsty Andrew Jackson has attacked him personally.

"Now, Boyd-" Raylan begins, ready to drag him over the counter because he doesn't want a scene but that doesn't mean he won't have one. Boyd's outstretched fingers, rather the thick block letters spelling out FIRST on his knuckles, stop him him cold. He snaps the twenty away from him and shoves it into Emmett's hand. "Ring it up as a single and wait for me to get back. Daniel knows how to run the shop. You," he points his right middle finger at Boyd in something that's as much an accusation as an insult. "Step outside with me."

"Of course."

Where he shoved Boyd out the front door the first time they saw each other, he leads him out the back to the employee exit today. Raylan manages to control himself until the door closes, leaving him alone with Boyd and the industrial dumpsters before he grabs both Boyd's thin wrists in his mismatched grip and yanks them up for inspection. The faint prison ink is gone, hidden by the bold professional letters declaring FIRST TEAM across both hands. The I was tucked into the F but it was right there.

"The hell is that?"

"1st Cavalry Division son," Boyd replies and he actually sounds proud. "Iron Horse Brigade. I don't know if you paid all that close attention to Operation Desert Storm but we were the first ones on the ground in the sandbox twenty years ago." He wiggles his fingers "The First Team. Even the Tiger Brigade got in the fray eventually so it didn't seem right to put just mine on there. The whole Cavalry was involved in that shit show but we did win." He holds them up like a socialite brandishing an engagement ring at jealous sorority sisters. "Like 'em?"

Raylan wants to call Boyd a spectacular asshole and kick his ass but he does like them. Whoever did the work is actually good with a needle and not half bad at the art either. The ink is so new it's shiny and Raylan wants to suck them into his mouth even though he knows they'd hurt. Fuck, maybe because they'd hurt. He knows he's smiling when he says, "Not bad."

"You're not a man easily impressed," Boyd says, nodding sagely. "I can respect that. You been places, done things, seen some sights." His newly inked hands grip the lapels of his jacket and tug it off his shoulders, letting it drop to the asphalt completely. "This one's a little more artistic for your more cultured eye."

Honestly, Raylan has no goddamn idea what the hell he's looking at. None at all. It's a circle and there's repeating shapes of blacks and greys contrasting sharply with negative spaces that appear to be...bats? "Are those bats?" Raylan takes a step closer and grabs Boyd's arm, twisting it for a closer look at what might be bats but are definitely not a goddamn swastika anymore. "Why did you get a tattoo of bats, Boyd?"

Boyd yanks his arm out of his grip and glares. "They're demons, you moron. The corresponding spaces are angels? It's M.C. Escher, Circle Limit IV, you absolute fucking philistine." He doesn't pout but it's a near thing. "They only look a little like bats."

He's grinning like a total asshole. He doesn't mean to be. It's just that is the most profound gesture anyone has ever made for him (and Winona fucking _married_ him) and he doesn't really know what else to do. He can't push Boyd up against the door and kiss him silly like he wants. It may be the twenty-tweens everywhere else but this is still Harlan. 

"I like the change."

"You know Tolstoy said everybody thinks of changing the world but don't nobody think about changing themselves."

"Well," Raylan concedes, "That one's harder."

"Thought since you gave it a try, I'd do the same."

"And?"

Boyd's smile is soft. "I'm liking it well enough so far. The perks are a big enough pay off for when the potholes on this road we call life make things bumpy. How about you?"

He thinks about the fact that he's gotten through almost two months of dinners with Helen and Arlo without coming to blows. He thinks about how DeeDee was googling distribution because as well as the scoops do, they've started making serious money on the hand-packed pints of the special flavors since that one evening in June when Bob Sweeney came in and bought them out for a family reunion and all of Eastern Kentucky suddenly seemed to have heard about them. He thinks of Daniel teaching Emmett to use the register without even needing Raylan's help and how he and Billy didn't even smell like weed most of the time anymore. He thinks about how many times he's tried to call Lucia or Saleem and hung up while Boyd slept next to him. He thinks about Boyd: kissing Boyd, touching Boyd, being with Boyd. 

There's no possible way he can answer that adequately. 

Raylan counters with "You coming home tonight?" and has to settle for that.

"If I get the ice cream I paid for, I will be."

"Then yeah. I think it's working for me too." Then, even though this is Harlan and doing it is dumber than a bag of Hammers, he ducks forward and places a lightning fast kiss on Boyd's lips, so light it might have been a breeze. But Boyd is staring, staring, and they both know it's not.

"Raylan?"

"Leave your jacket and go get your damn scoop. I'll be in in a minute."

"Not going to frog march me through the backroom?"

Raylan shakes his head and that could be that. Boyd would go in without asking him why but changing, it really is working for him. It's working for them both.

"I gotta send a text first."

At that, Boyd chokes on a laugh. "Who do you know who texts?"

"Friends of mine back in Miami. Shark attorney and her husband."

Boyds eyebrows bounce up to his hairline at that. "Well I'll be. I didn't know you had any friends, Raylan." It's a tease but with curiosity about the life they'd spent away from each other pushing at the edge of every word. So is the sad, ugly truth that even in high school, Raylan had never been one for friends. 

"I'll tell you about it later."

"At home," Boyd says in whispered agreement. 

When Raylan nods, he ducks back inside, crowing loudly about how obtaining his right to be served delicious ice cream was the fulfilment of his right to freely engage in the pursuit of happiness laid down in the Declaration by Thomas Jefferson, before the door closes behind him. Raylan almost feels bad for Emmett but it's good practice, dealing with Boyd. If a man can handle that, he can handle anything. 

He looks at Boyd's jacket lying on a heap on the ground and thinks doesn't know where to start with contacting Lucia. Then again, he never really knows where to start anything and it's turned out alright so far when he just does what he can when he's able. 

He fishes his phone out of his left pocket and flips it open, poking at Boyd's jacket with his cane until it hooks on the end. He's never been the best multitasker. It's more of an excuse to procrastinate yet by the time he's worked the jacket off the ground and firmly onto the cane, he's managed to type "Hi, how are you?" into the entry field. He hits send before he can chicken out and picks up the slightly elevated jacket off the bottom of his cane.

He steps back into the shop to the sound of Boyd praising his ice cream as a new gastronomic masterwork. Daniel's laughing but Emmett looks in desperate need of a rescue so Raylan limps back to the register, just in time for the phone in his pocket to vibrate. 

C>C>C>C>C>C>C>

  


_**Raylan:** And we are going to Glynco, by the way. I don't know if it'll be six weeks or six months, but we'll go, and if we can't go, I'll quit. You know? Do something else. I don't have any skills, so I don't know what that'll be, but I'll think of something. Maybe I'll sell ice cream. I like ice cream._  


**Justified** Season 2 Episode 13 - Bloody Harlan

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>   * According to Elmore's original "Fire in the Hole," as a member of the ground assault on Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm, Boyd was a member of the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army. [There are multiple types of units involved in the 1st Cavalry Division but the most famous of those still assigned as they were during the 90s is the 1st Armored Infantry Brigade "The Iron Horses" so that's where I put Boyd. The motto of the 1st Cavalry is "The First Team" as in They are the First Team sent into a combat situation.](http://www.hood.army.mil/1stcavdiv/pages/units/1abct/default.aspx)
>   * [M.C. Escher](http://www.mcescher.com/) did more than one version of the angels and demons tessellation with this being the one Boyd specifically referenced.  
>  [](http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/recognition-success/circle-limit-iv/)
>   * "There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself." -- Leo Tolstoy, "Three Methods Of Reform" in _Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian_ (1900)
>   * The Miami Marlins are the NBL baseball team for Miami specifically and when I was growing up they were also the team of Florida in general. The franchise didn't change from Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins until after Raylan would have left so the logo would've looked something like this.  
> 
>   * I personally made ice cream in high school chemistry class and I don't know if you guys did too but that endothermic reaction thing? It is a legitimate excuse to have an ice cream party.
>   * Alcoholic ice cream is a real thing. If you haven't had it and are old enough to imbibe in your country: run, don't walk. It's delicious.
> 



End file.
